CHAPTER 038
The first thing I felt was dampness.
Splorch.
The moment I put my hand, wet with salt water, into the snake hole, I felt a strange coldness, as if I had plunged my hand into a pool of ink.
And then I was sucked in.
“…!”
The pulling force that began at my hand soon swallowed my entire body.
‘I-I can’t breathe.’
It felt like wet paper sticking to my whole body and tightening around me.
Within that pitch-black field of sight and sensation, my vision spun round and round…
“Huhk!”
Thud.
My breath opened up again in cool empty air.
I opened my eyes.
Instead of stars, the nightscape of a provincial city glittering with neon signs spread out before me.
A Korean autumn night.
‘…I lived.’
It was reality.
“Hoo.”
I tried to get my trembling legs under me and stand, but nearly fell over.
Dark red-black ink was leaking and trailing out beneath my feet.
“……”
I lifted my gaze, following the trace of the ink.
There, on a sheet of old hanji paper, was an ink-wash painting, completely blurred and faded.
It looked as if, after many long years, the original picture had all blown away, and someone had then poured fresh ink over it and dragged it across the surface, so that no proper form remained visible at all….
‘…That must be one of the many paintings that led to that insane mountain from before.’
A chill ran over me, and I immediately looked away. Instead, I turned to the people sprawled across the ground.
One, two, three, four… seven. Everyone was here.
The painting must have spat them out after me.
“Ughhh….”
“Are you all right?”
“Ugh…. Huh?! O-outside!!”
Manager Lee Byeongjin cried out as he stared into empty space.
“Haha!! I-I lived!! I lived!!”
Then he turned to me with a face full of joy and tears and bowed his head deeply.
“Th-thank you. For saving me….”
“You saved yourself, Manager. Weren’t you the one who carried out the ritual?”
“…Haha, well, goodness, how modest of you…. I’m ashamed. Yes.”
Manager Lee Byeongjin lowered his head again, looking oddly moved.
It wasn’t modesty so much as flattery, but I decided to let him misunderstand it in a good way.
“U-uhhh!?”
The next ones to come to their senses were the middle schoolers, and while I was checking on them, I heard something surprising.
“This is your school-trip destination?”
“Yes!!”
Come to think of it, it really was the exact kind of place that matched the description they had given of “the pavilion behind the lodging in the mountain.”
‘Looks like we all got spat out here.’
…It was fortunate, at least, that we hadn’t woken up in that strange office wedged inside the company basement.
I didn’t stop the kids, who were hugging each other with relieved faces, crying and immediately trying to run downhill. I only told them to be careful.
“Watch your footing. And as soon as you get down there and meet an adult, call your parents, all right?”
But the kids seemed to be frightened instead.
“You’re not coming with us…??”
Uh… right, I guess that makes sense.
Whether I got mistaken for a kidnapper or treated like some righteous savior who rescued them, the company would probably not like it very much from the moment I stepped into a police station….
‘As long as the kids get back safely, that’s enough.’
I slowly shook my head and said,
“We have to go somewhere else. You all just keep heading straight down from here. Don’t look back.”
You could trip, after all.
“…! Okay.”
For some reason, the kids seemed to steel themselves at that, then carefully relied on one another and diligently made their way down the mountain together.
‘Good.’
The trail was well maintained, and the mountain itself was shallow enough that it would take them five minutes at most to get down.
I was watching their backs as they safely descended when—
Tap tap.
“Um….”
The Security Team captain, who had gotten up early and was already unsteadily on his feet, tapped me on the shoulder.
“Take this kid… with you….”
“Ah.”
The captain held out the wooden stick with the bluish wild ginseng hanging from it.
‘No, you could’ve just left that there.’
Still, I ended up receiving the unconscious wild ginseng, and the captain turned away and started walking off with heavy steps.
“…Where are you going?”
“The company……. I’m still on the clock….”
Ah.
‘But this is Gyeongju.’
Wouldn’t his working hours be over by the time he even got there?
Anyway, I followed after him. I had to get back to Seoul too.
With graduate student Go Seonha still slung over my back.
‘Let’s leave her in front of a police station on the way.’
That was when—
“Ahhh, so you two are with the Security Team, which means you have to get back quickly! I-I’ll come along! Haha! The missing person you were looking for has to go too, right? Let’s go together!”
I turned to look at Manager Lee Byeongjin.
The way he was hurrying after us made him look like some sly flatterer afraid he might lose his patrons.
Hmm, now that we had escaped…
maybe it was time he learned the truth.
“And, um, after things are settled, I’ll stop by your department and greet you properly too. Hehe, where exactly does the Security Team work…?”
“No.”
“…?”
“Even if you came to the Security Team, you wouldn’t be able to meet me there.”
“Pardon?”
“Because I’m with the Field Operations Team.”
A heavy silence fell.
“But th-the clothes are Security Team—”
“They lent them to me……”
“…!?”
At the Security Team captain’s words, Manager Lee Byeongjin’s face filled with confusion, but soon he seemed to force the situation into some shape in his mind anyway.
“Ahhh! Ah! I-I see. Huh? But I’ve never seen your face before… don’t you receive administrative support? Ah! Are you maybe some kind of special team, something like that? So that’s why the Security uniform……”
“I’m a rookie.”
“……?”
“I’m a new employee in Group D.”
“…???”
After that, things were dealt with fairly quickly.
Manager Lee Byeongjin kept crying, “That’s a lie,” all the way until he got back to the company from Gyeongju, but once he got to the company and even checked my personnel records himself, he went blank-faced again.
And then, contrary to what I expected, he did not immediately switch gears and start acting accordingly.
‘Why not?’
I had fully expected him to look down on me the moment he learned I was a rookie in the Field Operations Team, but instead he behaved surprisingly decently and kept watching my mood.
Though he did try hard to act hearty and started speaking to me more casually.
“H-hey, Soleum, did you hear? Th-the kids and that graduate student, I mean. Looks like they got back safely.”
A few days later, the manager told us that the people who had escaped with us had been registered with Baekilmong Co., Ltd. as civilian survivors.
He also hinted that they had probably received a fairly decent amount of money as an information-provision fee.
“In a way, it’s really ironic. You could say your fortune with wealth truly opened up. Huh? That’s life for you.”
And that same irony came to me as well.
“Anyway, from now on, all Soleum has to do is trust me completely, got it!”
“……Mm, yes.”
“Hahahaha!”
Manager Lee Byeongjin processed the manual review at lightning speed.
…Only mine.
‘Is it really okay to vanish for a whole week without notice and then show up acting like that?’
Still, it was good news for me.
The hanging scroll that served as the passage into the ‘Mountain Lord’ Ghost Story was swiftly collected as a Darkness under Baekilmong Co., Ltd., and in the process, my solo escape method was accepted as a manual once again.
On top of that, the review for revising the manual I had submitted when I applied to Group A, which had been pending, also passed at high speed.
And so, the amount that showed up in my account was…
Review Payout ₩100,000,000
“……”
‘This is insane.’
An amount big enough to make my hands shake had appeared.
Because two Darkness-related reviews had passed, an amount I had never even imagined had appeared in my banking app.
It felt like I wasn’t getting points because this hadn’t been formally assigned work, and that instead I was receiving money as the next best thing, but once the amount hit this level, anyone’s eyes would glaze over.
‘When the person in charge of manual reviews is this favorable, shouldn’t I be trying to conquer as many new Darknesses as possible somehow…?’
But voluntarily going around alone to meet all sorts of ghosts and monsters was still more than I could bring myself to do, so for now…
‘I should spend this hundred million well.’
Where would I have to spend it for people to say I spent it well?
Well, thirty percent of it already had a destination.
The very starting point of all this miserable suffering, after all.
“Congratulations, Brown.”
“Ohohoho!”
Blood Bath – ₩29,999,999
= ₩29,999,999
Ready to Purchase
Fortunately, the Blood Bath was still safely in stock at the alien shop, and I was able to keep the promise I had made to the moving plush doll.
‘Will it show up by courier again this time?’
The memory of the post office package box suddenly vomiting itself out into empty air left me faintly appalled.
As far as I knew, the Blood Bath was… a four-legged tub about the size of a fairly large installed bathtub you’d have in a house.
Its legs were even decorated with gold leaf, making it flashy on top of that. And that thing was supposed to drop into this tiny one-room company housing bedroom?
‘…Should I place the order from the bathroom?’
F-for now, I decided to shove the bed and desk aside a little to make space in the room and try pressing the order button here. There was way too little space in the bathroom.
“…All right. I’m ordering now.”
“How exciting! My chest is pounding.”
Talking with a plush doll that didn’t even have a heart to pound, I finally clicked the “Order” button in a room lit by a single flashlight.
Tsssh.
Just like the previous times, space tore open. Tension rose in me.
But the tear in space was… smaller than I expected?
Thunk.
It spat out a package.
The package was… small too…?
“…?”
I opened the post office parcel box, which was less than a quarter of the size I had expected.
There was a product box inside.
[Bath of Youth – Foot Massage Edition]
“……”
No wonder it had seemed cheap.
Come to think of it, since these things came from a home-shopping Ghost Story, I vaguely remembered there being all sorts of editions and versions left behind in the records too….
Except for a few specific cases where the differences were actually meaningful, most of it was just fun little detail variations.
‘Still, I never would’ve dreamed there’d be a footbath version.’
Maybe because it was some sort of special edition, it even came with a sparkly gold-foil sticker and a certificate.
[10 Years Free Warranty Service]
Absolutely meaningless….
‘As if I’d ever request after-service on something like this.’
Still, I opened it anyway.
There wasn’t any record in <Darkness Exploration Record> of people touching the Blood Bath and automatically having blood extracted from them.
When I unboxed it from the angular packaging like an ordinary electronic appliance, there it was beneath the expensive wrapping material that luxury brands liked to use to project prestige.
And when I removed that wrapping at last, it revealed itself.
‘…The Bath of Youth.’
Also known as the Blood Bath.
It was a glossy black-and-white checkered tub that looked as if it had been made of gleaming ceramic.
The entire tub formed elegant curves, and golden cat-paw-shaped legs sturdily supported it from all sides.
It looked fairly stylish.
‘…Aside from the fact that it’s a footbath.’
However, someone whose size fit it perfectly seemed extremely excited.
“Mr. Roe Deer! Please put me in there! Together with the bath additive….”
Wait, if you mean the Blood Bath’s bath additive….
“…You want my blood?”
“Indeed! Your comprehension is excellent, Mr. Roe Deer.”
This is insane.
For a moment I hesitated between persuasion and running away, but—
“Haha! I’m joking, friend!”
“……”
“There’s no audience and no camera here. Why would I make such an outrageous demand of a friend?”
Then what about when there is an audience and a camera?
But I didn’t say that out loud. The one who wants something is the one who has to swallow his words.
Still, there was one thing I couldn’t help saying.
“I wish you wouldn’t joke like that. It’s not funny, it’s scary.”
“Oh dear, understood. Humor is always an element heavily shaped by culture and must be handled with great care!”
This counts as being handled with care…?
“In any case, to return to the point… isn’t there already something in this room far more suitable to use as the bath additive?”
“Oh, I wonder whether our Mr. Roe Deer can guess it!”
Something like that in the company housing?
I turned my head.
‘Surely he doesn’t mean Baek Saheon next door…’
No. He’d better not.
Leaving that possibility out of it, though… there was one thing that did come to mind.
With a displeased look, I pointed toward the thing that had been occupying one corner of the desk in the company housing for the past few days.
“…This wild ginseng?”
“Excellent!”
That’s right.
That corrupted purple wild ginseng I had, in the end, accidentally stolen from the ‘Mountain Lord’ Ghost Story.
‘Whether you’d call it sap or blood, something definitely seemed to be flowing through it.’
Still, for the past few days, aside from its purple color, this wild ginseng had been no different from an ordinary one.
If it woke up, I had intended to grind up another whole pouch of apple juice and make it drink it again, and if I still couldn’t handle it, I’d just donate it to the company as-is. But unexpectedly, it never woke up.
‘To the point that it felt stupid how tense I had been that morning at sunrise….’
Brown had even commented on it like this.
“It doesn’t look like it will wake up going forward either. Aren’t weak beasts the kind that play dead when they feel threatened, by nature?”
I decided to interpret that as being because it had been dragged from that changgwi space, the “Mountain Lord’s gravesite,” into the real world.
“In any case, friend. If you are very worried, I shall keep my eyes on it from here on.”
And up to now, nothing whatsoever had happened.
Anyway, so he wanted me to use this wild ginseng?
‘Hmm, that might actually be worth trying.’
If it wasn’t possessed, then it was basically just handling a juicy ginseng.
Besides… to be honest, part of me also wanted to see the Blood Bath in operation.
‘It is fascinating.’
I was curious too. That was probably why I spent my spare moments at work reading through the Ghost Story wiki….
There really aren’t many Ghost Stories I can observe without losing my mind even when I encounter them only as images.
I did want to take advantage of this opportunity, where it would be operating with vegetable juice instead of blood.
“Oho!”
I went and brought rubber gloves and scissors from the kitchen.
A low, excited voice came from the monster plush doll under the bed.
“Now please place me in the tub!”
“Wait.”
Before that, there was something I had to say.
“This tub is supposed to be effective for restoring youth, but would you even need that? Um… you already look plenty young.”
I wanted to point out that the idea might not even apply to a doll in the first place, but I held it in.
The plush doll, however, laughed brightly. It was a clean sound, like a recorded effect on a show.
“Hahaha! You are viewing the concept of rejuvenation far too narrowly, my friend! It’s all right. You have a fine interpreter and speaker right here!”
“‘Rejuvenation’… yes, in the cultural sphere of Sino-Korean vocabulary, it means ‘spring returns.’ Strictly speaking, then, it means ‘to regain the abilities of one’s prime.’”
“And now, when my limbs feel strangely heavy and it is difficult to keep my balance, that is exactly the kind of effect I require!”
Th… but you’re a stuffed doll.
And besides, the instruction manual says it’s good for things like “healing wounds, relieving fatigue, treating arthritis, and skin beauty.”
‘…I don’t know.’
If he was insisting this much, then fine.
There weren’t any cases in <Darkness Exploration Record>, at least, where treating the plush doll well and giving it strength in the Good Friend Ghost Story led to getting harmed….
The disaster had happened when people treated it carelessly.
I decided to stop myself before I thought too deeply about it. It was terrifying for no reason.
Instead, I put on the rubber gloves, held the scissors in one hand and the wild ginseng in the other.
‘Let’s try it.’
And I reached my hand toward the Blood Bath.
