Chapter 21
I Have a Proposal
“You could tell me this was a storeroom someone abandoned in the middle of the night, and I’d believe you.”
“No, it’s just that our company is a teensy bit slow at getting things done. The higher-ups are a little… you know!”
Who furnishes a workplace out of their own pocket?
No matter how they tried to dress it up, I wouldn’t be surprised to see people online calling this a shitty company you should flee the moment you join.
“What kind of cleaning company doesn’t use vacuum cleaners these days? Even if they can’t give us a thirty-liter one, we should at least have one.”
“There’s no electricity inside ghost stories. Even if we had one, we couldn’t use it, could we?”
“Don’t tell me my locker was ripped out of some other place and brought here too.”
“It wasn’t! At least… I don’t think it was?”
Still unable to shake my suspicious gaze, I pulled open the locker bearing my name. Contrary to my fears, it had merely been left unused for a while. The inside was clean and in perfectly good condition.
“This is a uniform jacket. Why are there two uniforms?”
One was the same short jacket I had worn yesterday, while the other was a jumpsuit. Both were the same colorless black.
“We’re the cleaning team, so our uniforms are modified slightly to suit our department. I heard the support team gets lab coats.”
Come to think of it, the jumpsuit was a little more comfortable for me. I wouldn’t have to worry about my pants when going somewhere filthy.
There was nothing else worth looking at, so I was about to close the locker when a sheet of paper attached to the back of the door caught my eye.
[Kim Hanmu’s Achievement Chart]
Despite having a name that sounded like something found in an elementary school or kindergarten, it was a neatly designed sticker chart.
It was divided into one hundred spaces, and one circular sticker had already been placed on it.
“Achievement chart?”
“Oh, you found it! Did I never tell you about that?”
“I’ve never even seen it before.”
“That’s strange. They normally explain everything when you join…”
Myeong Haebin muttered to herself before letting out a quiet exclamation, as though she had realized something.
“That’s right. You had no reason to know about this, did you?”
“What do you mean?”
“Weren’t you curious? About why the people here risk their lives going in and out of ghost stories?”
“Because if we leave the ghost stories alone, they’ll devour other people.”
Even as I said it, something felt off.
Would all these people really sacrifice their lives for complete strangers whose faces they had never even seen?
“You’re surprisingly naïve, Senior. That’s just an empty ideal. This is the real reason. Almost every employee here has the same goal—to fill this entire chart.”
Myeong Haebin pointed to my achievement chart and slowly ran her hand down it. There were far too many empty spaces. One hundred felt like an impossibly distant number.
But what she said next was even harder to believe.
“If you fill the entire chart, they grant you a wish. Anything you want. Whether you want to become a billionaire, return to the past, or bring someone back from the dead. Anything.”
If it could grant you whatever you wanted, perhaps the word “only” could be placed before the number one hundred.
But this company was deeply connected to ghost stories.
“Can you trust that?”
“Does that matter? Everyone here is desperate enough to stake their lives on these mere stickers.”
Her voice was dry and cold, utterly devoid of human emotion, and it sent a chill down my spine.
That was why I had had no reason to know about it. I didn’t have a wish desperate enough to justify it.
“Then do you have something you want that badly too, Haebin?”
As though a light had suddenly switched on, Myeong Haebin returned to her cheerful self and pouted.
“Who knows? Maybe a little?”
“What does ‘a little desperate’ even mean?”
“I don’t have any memories from before I joined this company. Once I collect all the stickers, I’m thinking of asking them to restore the memories I’ve forgotten.”
Was she acting, or was she serious?
Her expression gave nothing away.
“Well, anyway! You receive one of these stickers after completing a month of work, and another is awarded to whoever contributed the most when a ghost story is cleared. That’s why you already have one.”
Had they taken the Hwaae High School incident into consideration?
I had somehow ended up joining the orientation session and earning myself an achievement in the process.
What should I wish for once I collect all the stickers?
She said they would grant anything I desired, but that only made deciding more difficult.
I was still a long way from collecting all one hundred, so I could think about it slowly.
“And there should be… a cleaning-team operations manual in here…”
“There were only clothes inside.”
“I guess that hasn’t arrived yet either. I’ll go out and look for it. Could you wait here for a moment?”
After rummaging through my locker, Myeong Haebin repeatedly told me to stay put before darting out of the room.
There was nothing here.
At this point, I should have been grateful that cleaning supplies existed at all.
It doesn’t seem like people think very highly of the cleaning team either. Is it because the team is newly established?
What could I do about it? I might as well do what I could.
That meant it was time to check the phone quietly vibrating inside my pocket, as though reminding me of its existence whenever I was about to forget it.
“All right, you want me to ask you questions, don’t you? I haven’t forgotten.”
[You may receive two more answers.]
[You may view ??.]
Once I opened the app, it behaved itself and merely displayed text again.
What a strange thing.
I was curious about what “??” meant, but I decided to ask my questions first.
“How long do I have to stay at this company?”
My injured arm had been one reason I joined the company, but the app had played a much larger role.
It probably wanted me to keep cleaning ghost stories, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that if I continued living this way, the long and uneventful life I had so desperately desired would instead end up short and eventful.
Having a clear target would make it easier to endure.
After blinking for a moment, the app began displaying letters as though they were being typed in real time.
[The current estimate is 999 years, 99 days, and 99 hours.]
“Are my eyes malfunctioning?”
I closed my eyes, turned the screen off, and turned it back on, but the words remained unchanged.
No, they had grown even bolder.
[999 years, 99 days, and 99 hours]
That wasn’t even a goal a human being could survive long enough to reach.
I had decided. Once I filled my achievement chart, I would wish for this app to be deleted.
Even one hundred stickers are a long way off.
But what else could I do? For now, this was my only option.
After hesitating briefly, I asked my final question.
“Explain why you need me.”
Out of all the countless people in the world, why me?
The app began displaying text without hesitation.
[Kim Hanmu has ■ed with [].]
The obscured characters were impossible to read. When I touched the blacked-out portion, a message unlike any I had seen before appeared.
[That word cannot be disclosed to Kim Hanmu.]
What was this supposed to mean?
I would be lying if I said it didn’t send a chill down my spine, but I tried to calm myself as much as possible.
“I don’t think that answers my question at all. Can you really call that an answer? Explain it in a way I can understand.”
Worried it might simply tell me that I had exhausted my questions again, I carefully added,
“I thought you and I were cooperating, but if you’re going to use loopholes like this, then I’m done. Are you going to kill me? Fine, let me die. Humans can’t live for nine hundred and ninety-nine years anyway.”
This app needed me.
[Kim Hanmu does not die.]
The sentence crackled as though it were an error, then instantly changed into something else.
[Kim Hanmu can clean ghost stories. [] desires their residue. The more [] grows, the closer Kim Hanmu comes to his dream.]
Hadn’t the words just changed?
Had I imagined it?
At least this new message had no obscured sections, and I could understand it.
I had learned two things.
- The contamination that disappeared whenever I cleaned was being taken by this app.
- The app grew in exchange for that residue. The achievements I had unlocked were probably part of that growth too.
“Can I take that to mean you’ll release me if I continue helping you?”
[I have a proposal. Would you like to view it?]
[Y] [N]
A proposal? What was that supposed to be?
I tapped Y.
[Turn your body to the right.]
I had no idea why it was giving me instructions when it had said it was making a proposal, but I decided to follow them.
[Approach your bag.]
It must have meant the bag containing my cleaning tools.
The bag still bore all the traces of yesterday, its equipment not yet put back in order.
[Bend at the waist.]
[Open the bag.]
[Reach inside.]
The overly detailed, step-by-step instructions continued.
As I followed the suspicious directions, my fingertips brushed against something that rustled.
[Remove the plastic bag touching your index finger.]
There seemed to be something inside, but I couldn’t remember putting anything in there.
Had this always been here?
When I pulled it out, I had to exert every ounce of self-control to keep myself from hurling it away.
It was the kidney that had been extracted from me at the school.
A solid lump of flesh, cold and stained with sticky, congealed blood.
[Would you like to provide it to []?]
Had my kidney grown back?
The hollow discomfort deep within my abdomen that had plagued me all day at the school was gone, so it seemed to have returned. But whether I should give my kidney to this strange entity was another matter entirely.
“I’d rather throw it away. Why should I give my kidney to you?”
[It will contribute to []’s growth.]
That was unpleasant.
Throw my kidney in the trash versus feed it to the app.
Both options were revolting.
Still, if its growth ultimately benefited me…
“Fine. Take it. Go ahead.”
The instant I finished speaking, the plastic bag vanished from my hand.
Just then, the door opened. Myeong Haebin had finally returned.
“I’m back! What were you doing?”
“…Organizing my bag.”
I supposed that counted as organizing too.
“So, did you bring the manual?”
“Well, apparently the cleaning team doesn’t have a manual yet.”
I hadn’t expected anything in the first place.
“But they gave us a job instead!”
She didn’t have to accept that.
A company that had no manual to train its employees with but still gave them work. What had happened to all that talk about me being a specially recruited talent?
This was why you always had to be careful before joining a company.
“It’s another cleaning job, right?”
“Yes. But this one is genuinely easy. It’s Grade Five!”
“There are grades?”
“Yes, from Grade Five to Grade One. The lower the number, the more dangerous and difficult the ghost story is. Yesterday’s was Grade Four.”
Hwaae High School had been Grade Four…
Something that deadly was only Grade Four? Then what were the higher grades like?
“So where are we going this time?”
Instead of answering, Myeong Haebin showed me a wooden plaque.
[Chodam Park—West Gate]
The first part was a place name, but what was the significance of the second part?
“They aren’t going to tell us what kind of ghost story it is?”
“I asked them too, but apparently this ghost story only appeared recently, so there aren’t any exploration-team records. It’s small too.”
The exploration team.
Those people I had only ever seen as corpses.
“All right, then. Let’s go.”
It was Grade Five, after all. It had to be better than a teacher with scissor hands or a teddy bear wandering around with a knife.
I packed plenty of garbage bags, reorganized my bag for outdoor cleaning so I could test my enhanced tools, and changed into the jumpsuit uniform.
“Did you put in a capsule?”
The capsule she meant was the blue pill that displayed the cause of death after its user died.
There had been a plastic container full of them inside the locker.
“Yeah.”
I lied.
I hadn’t taken one.
It made me feel as though I were deliberately marching to my death. I didn’t bother telling her that I had felt an instinctive aversion to it.
“Then I’ll open the door!”
Myeong Haebin announced energetically. She inserted the plaque into the door, turned the handle, and pulled it open.
Whooosh—
A cool wind swept through the doorway, carrying fallen leaves with it.
The sounds of passing cars, faint voices, and music spilling out of nearby shops were all perfectly clear.
“This… doesn’t seem like a ghost story.”
We had emerged in front of Chodam Park’s east gate.
But this wasn’t a ghost story. It was an ordinary street. A yellow bus drove past on the asphalt road behind us.
There were even people inside Chodam Park.
Not anomalies, but actual human beings.
“Huh. You’re right. The mission plaque couldn’t have made a mistake, though! Should we try going to the west gate?”
“Sure. Let’s go around.”
We followed the road outside the park for about half its circumference before reaching the west gate.
There was almost no one around, but it didn’t feel particularly different from the east gate.
“If there isn’t a ghost story here either, I’ll give them a piece of my mind. I’ll stake your name on it, Senior!”
“What good will staking my name do?”
I was only a new employee.
She had probably said it just for the sake of saying something. Still, it helped ease my nerves, and my steps felt much lighter as we entered the park.
The mission plaque said the west gate, so there must be something here…
My foot froze above the dirt path.
The six characters carved into a prominently placed stone seized my attention.
“Didn’t we come in through the west gate?”
[Chodam Park—East Gate]
At some point, the rumble of traffic behind us had disappeared.
There were no people.
Not even the sound of birds.