Chapter 174
Lizard had become a theme park employee.
No, really!
This morning, Kim Soleum stared blankly at Manager Lee Jaheon, who had suddenly, instead of checking out, declared with absolute certainty that he wanted a job.
For real?
“Yes.”
And in an instant, he had finished signing the employment contract. The sight of Manager Lee Jaheon in uniform was truly, truly….
I-it suits him.
Since he was Lizard, he really did look like a proper theme park employee….
“Over there?”
Mm.
Naturally assigned as security personnel, Manager Lee Jaheon ended up working near the main entrance.
Please take care of dealing with the troublemakers….
For reference, Jang Heowoon standing next to him was looking utterly at a loss as he stared at the sweet room voucher in his hand.
That’s right. I had already heard what Jang Heowoon had done!
—Um, actually, I went to Manager Lizard last night and asked him. That the resort was short on staff, and that we couldn’t leave this place because of it….
And so Jang Heowoon was promoted to HR manager.
“……!?”
It was a pyramid-like structure, but since they were all going to make one big score and run anyway, nobody cared!
Still… Kim Soleum did feel a strange sense of dissonance.
How did he know?
That more staff were needed in order to escape this resort.
“Uh? Well, it just came to me naturally… ah, since we needed three staff members to operate the resort in order to get one stamp, I thought the next step might be similar…. That manpower would be needed, I mean….”
Mm.
As reasoning went, it was quite good, but there was something oddly strange about it, so Kim Soleum decided to remember it.
Anyway, it’s a good thing.
After all, if it was Manager Lee Jaheon, it would not be strange at all for him to intervene as a superior for the survival of the staff… no, as an alien with excellent values.
In this way, we had taken one step closer to escape!
But there was someone watching this with growing anxiety.
Fuck.
The Ladybug employee rolled his eyes.
As a manual for handling the insane room-service situations came out and work became somewhat more manageable, he had started entertaining other thoughts.
Standing out too much in a Ghost Story was madness, but falling behind and being left farther from “success” was also a matter directly tied to survival.
Looking at Jang Heowoon in his Bison mask, he held back a curse.
Is that bastard the only one they’re saving?
Ghost Stories where only those who passed by the standards of a bizarre being could clear them were also a kind of cliché.
This won’t do.
In the end, he coaxed the Weasel employee who had come to check out—using lies and vaguely threatening remarks—into filling out an employment contract.
Hearing things like You can only leave if you become staff; Manager Lizard didn’t start working for no reason, the Weasel-masked employee, frightened out of his mind, went to the mascot on the verge of a panic attack.
This is it.
The Ladybug employee expected that maybe he too would be given some kind of position if he did that, but….
You can go.
The yellow mascot instead told the Weasel employee that he was allowed to leave.
After staring at him intently for a long moment, it said it curtly.
Fuck!
Was that because he was useless?
…Still, since the Weasel employee practically clung and begged until he got hired, he was somewhat satisfied.
There’s one more guinea pig now…. Huh? Huhhh?
At that moment—
the mass-produced mascots came swarming in and set up something in the middle of the lobby.
Look at this.
A giant draw machine appeared in the center of the lobby.
“……??”
For a moment, the Ladybug employee forgot every word he knew and simply stared blankly at the huge, glittering, dazzling glass structure like an enormous Christmas tree.
W-what in the world was this?
As if to explain, a flashy sign was attached to the front.
[Welcome Gift Draw]
Come discover wonderful items to help you rest.
Inside, which looked like a giant snow globe, it was packed full of wrapped presents.
And guests could press a button to draw one of the gifts inside.
Kim Soleum, inside the yellow mascot, was looking at it with pleased eyes.
Probability games always mean dopamine….
For reference, the special gifts were wrapped in gold, and if one was drawn, the room was upgraded to a suite on the top floor.
Besides that, there were no duds at all—only good items—so there was no way anyone would dislike it…. Hahaha.
Take this and then stay quietly in your room, please.
The yellow mascot was scattering bribes in every direction!
“Oh my, oh my, it’s sparkling! I like sparkling things! May I draw one?”
Mm.
A gift.
And that wasn’t all.
It was upgrading guests’ rooms one after another too, attaching reasons as it went…!
W-what is this?
This was truly a giveaway-style operation!
The Ladybug employee looked at the mascot in confusion and bewilderment.
And then he realized.
Is it trying to charm the guests like this and pressure them to stay at the theme park longer, thereby raising its own standing as the owner of the resort?!
It wasn’t!
Kim Soleum, who was simply running a variety-show-style board game by going all-in with every coin for the sake of escape, looked at the guests with proud eyes.
For reference, starting today, he had also openly put up a sign on the glass door in front of the lobby that read A Space for Quiet Rest.
Perhaps because it was effective, some of the worst troublemakers were already being cut off at the entrance.
Good.
The yellow mascot let out a sigh of relief, picturing a fairly promising outlook.
Thinking that, at last, he was getting the hang of how to run the resort now that it had entered its second day.
But just before closing that day—
an unexpected situation began to unfold.
I looked at the prospective employee in front of me… no, the would-be lodger who was short on money.
The person in question, who still looked human, with hollow eyes, rummaged through their pocket with an anxious face and then whimpered.
“T-there isn’t any…. I don’t have any money…!”
Ooh!
As a gesture of welcome, I stretched out my hand and kindly said,
Then—
work.
Labor will be counted too!
“Hiiiik!”
But instead, the other person bolted for the entrance. No, I had even been planning to let them sleep in the lobby if they wanted….
I truly hoped they would quickly leave the theme park before business hours ended. Smacking my lips, I looked down at my forepaw.
Finding that last one… is hard.
Failed attempt at recruitment in place of lodging fees.
Still, I thought if I kept at it, surely at least one more person would get caught.
…How much longer will this take?
The thought that this might take longer than expected made me slightly anxious, but since this was no time to panic from fear, I forcibly pressed it down.
Right now, I was a mascot.
And….
—See you again next time~
Today’s closing time has come again.
Theme park operations ended.
End of Day 2.
“Aaaahhh!”
“It’s the resort!”
The last guests came rushing in through the doors, and the mass-produced mascots slowly moved to either side, preparing to close the doors.
Manager Lee Jaheon, as though still being taught the job, stood behind a mass-produced mascot holding a restraining baton while it appeared to be instructing him in something.
Manager Lee Jaheon as a rookie….
I was just thinking it was a slightly amusing sight when—
Thud.
“…!”
Someone shoved the glass door roughly and appeared in the lobby.
“Welco—hiiik.”
Beside me, I heard Jang Heowoon suck in a breath and fight back a retch.
…At first, I had thought it was a monster too.
A blood-soaked monster with humans sprouting from where its arms should have been.
But when I looked closer, it was actually a small person dragging one person in each hand.
…I might have thought it was a horrific scene.
If only the things clutched in those two arms had not been corpses, with all four limbs broken and skulls smashed open, dragged along like trash.
“Hhk—”
The Field Mouse employee, who had been cleaning, covered his own mouth. Not supernatural horror this time, but pure fear, arising from the threat to survival.
That thing came tearing through the gap between the guests who had entered first, leaving two thick trails of blood across the lobby floor as it approached the front at a frightening speed….
“……”
Huh?
Instead of fear, a strange emotion welled up inside me.
Displeasure.
You mustn’t cut in line.
Wasn’t that improper behavior?
And why was it coming while so blatantly dirtying the floor?
It could have left the corpses in the lobby, or entrusted them to the mass-produced mascots, and they would have kindly moved them!
It lacked dignity.
It didn’t suit our resort.
The mass-produced mascots and I all turned to stare at it at once.
“……”
But this bizarre, sudden displeasure flew away the moment I met the person’s eyes at the front desk.
The small, blood-soaked figure, panting harshly, raised its head toward me at the front desk….
“One room, please.”
…!!
The Dolphin mask.
…It was Senior Lee Seonghae of the elite team!
W-why are you here?
Shouldn’t she have left yesterday? Why was she still here, and besides….
How in the world did she survive last night?
Inside the theme park after business hours.
Dragging around two dead corpses while doing it.
“……Wait a second!”
I barely managed to properly look again at the dreadful corpses hanging from both of Senior Lee Seonghae’s hands.
Masks and suits.
They were teammates who had drawn the red card, just like Senior Lee Seonghae.
A chill ran down my spine.
They’d died, and she had been carrying them around the whole time.
Because if the physical distance increased, they’d get strangled to death.
“……”
Something about it felt strange, but as the mascot, I politely attended to the person in front of me.
Lodging fee.
“Ah.”
Thud, thud.
Senior Lee Seonghae dropped the corpses carelessly onto the floor and held out to me a small bloodstained golden something.
“Would something like this do?”
It was pure gold.
It looked like some decorative object had been broken apart.
Gold, huh.
If I had been my original self, I would have thought that since I was short on funds anyway, this was an incredible bargain and accepted it right away.
But as the mascot, I couldn’t do that… hoo.
No.
This.
I pulled out one of the plastic coins—the Cheerful Coins—from beneath the desk and showed it to her.
But Senior Lee Seonghae gave no response. Naturally, it seemed she didn’t have any of those coins….
Ah.
In that case.
Then—
want to work?
This one might work.
Tense, I watched her mouth.
Lee Seonghae’s mouth opened….
“Sure!”
Whoa!
“But both my legs are cracked, so… couldn’t I do a sitting job or something? Hehe.”
“……”
Why are you saying that so cheerfully?
Now that I looked at her, it seemed the line-cutting too had probably happened only because she had barely managed to move here while not properly perceiving her surroundings at all.
For now, she clearly needed rest right away.
I’ll hear the details tomorrow.
Here.
I quickly held out the employment contract, and Lee Seonghae read over it carefully….
“But there’s no compensation clause?”
Ah.
Right. From the employee’s point of view, that was the most important thing in the contract.
The situation was too urgent….
We built a resort out of ruins in half a day and started normal operations, you see.
Just a moment.
I quickly wrote on the back of the employment contract.
The employee has the right to be guaranteed lodging while working at the resort in question.
Hm.
And in addition to that—
And if the employee works until all three facilities in the resort have operated successfully, they may take one desired item from the souvenir shop of the resort that will open in the future.
Then maybe she’d be able to take an item too.
It’s worth trying.
I had no idea whether a real souvenir shop would appear, but thinking of the other theme park zones, it was a fairly plausible deduction.
“Oh, sounds good.”
After checking every line, Senior Lee Seonghae accepted the pen and signed boldly.
Employee: Dolphin
At that moment, something astonishing happened.
“Ah.”
The traces of blood all over Senior Lee Seonghae’s body vanished, a neat uniform covered her, and even her tangled, chaotic hair was cleaned up and tied neatly downward.
Over the badly injured parts of her body, things like buckles or stickers using the mascot design were attached, adding decorations suitable for a theme park employee.
…As if by a lie.
“Oh.”
Senior Lee Seonghae jumped in place and raised both hands.
“My body feels light!”
That was a relief.
It looks like it doesn’t just put them in uniform, but actually gives them the appearance of an employee.
So they can work properly.
Good.
Now I needed to guide Senior Lee Seonghae to a room, since the next lodger also had to be received—ah!
Senior Lee Seonghae tried to tuck the corpses back under both arms again. Gah!
No.
You’ll get the uniform dirty!
This is seriously creepy.
Looking at the two corpses Senior Lee Seonghae had just flung onto the floor, I suppressed the goosebumps rising over my skin.
Then I pointed with my finger.
Leave them.
“If I leave them behind, I’ll die….”
Inside the resort.
It’s okay.
Strictly speaking, all my employees were mascots, parts of me.
So when they were working as employees, at least. Inside the resort, it seemed they were probably recognized as one bundle.
That’s why everyone is currently working at their own posts.
And as for the corpses from the same team… hm. It seemed they had automatically become my subordinates too.
They were mine now.
I watched as the mass-produced mascots carried the two corpses off somewhere.
…How exactly that would turn out, let’s not think about it. It would be bad for my mental health, and right now I didn’t have the room to worry about something like that.
Let’s take care of the living.
For today—
rest.
I placed into Senior Lee Seonghae’s hand the welcome gift that I had not yet put into the machine.
It was a golden-flower scented candle that cured insomnia.
“Ooh.”
After tracing the shape of the golden flower in the air and watching the burning flame for a moment, she gave a small smile.
“You’re a kindhearted mascot.”
Thank you.
Senior Lee Seonghae raised both hands in clenched fists.
It looked like a dolphin cheering.
“Then where will I be working from tomorrow?”
Well, about that…. Hm.
It feels like she’d be genuinely excellent at cutting off the troublemakers.
But at the same time, it also felt like she might openly get into bloody fights with unreasonable customers or try to kill them….
Hmmm.
I postponed the posting.
For now, stand by.
“Yes, sir.”
Because it was around time for new positions to appear.
Resort expansion.
That night, after business hours ended.
Day 2 Business Results
Visitors: 102
Lodging Guests: 67
Rooms Used: 41
Satisfied Guests: 33 / 45
Revenue: Cheerful Coins x62
Done.
I was able to receive a fairly good report card.
Even on the first day, satisfaction was pretty good.
Starting from today, the second day, I would likely be able to confirm more accurately tomorrow just how effective the “distancing” theme had been.
The important thing was….
Now I can expand the facilities.
I looked at the document.
What is needed to expand resort facilities
Staff 3 complete.
Satisfied Guests 30 complete.
The opening has gone smoothly! Lodging guests are generally satisfied, and at present, the greatest reason for satisfaction seems to be that it is ‘lodging befitting a theme park.’
I look forward to seeing what effects the new bedding and welcome gifts purchased through revenue investment will produce.
And… it seems this resort is now ready to open new facilities as well.
Which facility would be best to open?
I am considering the following list….
I looked at the pen in my hand as it flew across the page.
The words I had been expecting filled the document.
Spa
Restaurant
Fitness Center
Swimming Pool
…Hoo.
Since I’d thought about this in advance, it was easy.
Let’s see.
Considering the tendencies of the employees currently here, and the clichés of Ghost Stories….
This is it.
I lifted the pen and drew a circle around one facility.
Spa ○
Restaurant
Fitness Center
Swimming Pool
Restaurant: classic Ghost Story material. Fitness center: gore risk. Swimming pool: overlapped with the blue zone, and who knew what kind of sudden incident that might trigger, so all excluded.
Then it has to be the spa.
Everyone can just go have a sauna and a massage!
I smiled to myself in satisfaction.
For reference, this choice would bring about a situation I had never expected at all.
Two days later,
the number of guests at our resort would surge sevenfold….
“……!?”
And then.
…On that same day.
The first death occurred.
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