Chapter 25

Chodam Park—West Gate (4)

“I thought you wouldn’t go because it looked suspicious.”

“We can’t keep walking forever without so much as a sip of water. We have to try.”

With no electricity running to the refrigerator, everything inside was lukewarm.

Still, there didn’t appear to be anything wrong with the 500-milliliter bottles of water or the soft drinks. The same went for the snacks and bread.

The kiosk also carried a few miscellaneous items besides food, including lighters, tape, and newspapers. They must not have sold very well, because they were covered in a thick layer of dust.

Do we have to ask for the price?

As a test, I picked up a bottle of water and a chocolate-filled bun, then tapped on the glass behind the metal bars.

What would the kiosk owner demand in exchange for them?

With a loud rattle, the window slid open. A pair of gleaming eyes stared at me from within without a word.

The fear that whatever lurked inside that darkness might reach out and snatch me at any moment began simmering deep beneath my heart.

“I’d like to buy these.”

They probably didn’t accept cards. What would it ask for?

A sound came from inside.

It was like a language that could not even be called a language.

When I turned to Myeong Haebin, she also looked flustered and tucked her hair behind her ear.

“Excuse me. Could you say that again?”

“Huh? What?”

What had it said to make her react like that?

“What’s it saying?”

“Uh… What was that? Reungmeung… gwongeun… gah… I don’t know. I’m not messing with you!”

Myeong Haebin struggled to spit out the difficult sounds one fragment at a time. Then she drooped her eyebrows and stared at me as though she felt genuinely wronged.

“You can’t understand it?”

“No! It’s speaking some kind of alien language…”

After meeting those scarlet eyes for a moment, I dropped everything onto the counter in front of the bars.

“Forget it. I’m not buying anything.”

“I’m sorry. I want to decipher it for you, but the more I listen, the less sense it makes…”

“It’s not your fault, Ms. Haebin. It’s fine. Let’s go.”

The fact that the kiosk had gone out of its way to open had to mean there was something here. But this was how it wanted to play things?

Fine. If you were thirsty, you dug your own well.

After putting some distance between us and the kiosk, I checked the container building once more before stopping.

“Ms. Haebin. Hold on.”

I slowly pulled down the zipper of my jumpsuit and extracted a small bottle of sports drink that had been precariously tucked against the small of my back.

“Huh? Senior! Don’t tell me…?!”

“What? Did I look like such an upstanding citizen that I could live without laws?”

“Yes!”

“You still don’t know me very well.”

That was right. I had stolen it.

My heart had been pounding like mad. Had the owner really not noticed? Or had it noticed and simply let me take it?

I hoped it was the former.

When I twisted the cap, it made a sharp crack, accompanied by the familiar resistance of opening a new bottle.

So far, so good.

I tipped the bottle and poured it into my mouth.

The opaque, lukewarm liquid flowed between my lips as mud saturated with the fishy stench of stagnant water.

“Damn it. Of course it wouldn’t work.”

My last hope had been shattered.

No wonder it hadn’t stopped me. Was it because taking the drink was pointless?

I considered spitting it out, but forced myself to swallow the thick, moisture-laden mud instead, hoping my enhanced stomach might digest at least some of it.

“Why would you swallow that?!”

“Sorry. It just happened.”

Ignoring Myeong Haebin’s scolding, I wiped my mouth. I didn’t feel refreshed in the slightest.

If we could consume stolen goods, things would have become far too easy.

“Let’s go back to the kiosk. We need to figure out what the hell it’s saying—”

My gaze suddenly locked onto something and followed it.

“…”

Two people in tracksuits were slowly jogging past us.

“...They’re an anomaly, right?”

“They’re the Jogger Aberrations. I told you about them earlier. They’re one of the park’s perennial favorites.”

“Oh, those.”

After seeing nothing but bizarre things, I’d thought I was hallucinating when ordinary people suddenly ran past us.

I wiped my face with a sleeve that had not yet completely dried.

“Okay. Let’s head back to the kiosk first.”

Just as I spoke and began turning around, a fading voice pricked my ears.

“Weren’t those people just now?”

“See? I told you I was only doing one more lap.”

“Yeah, yeah. You’re always right.”

Myeong Haebin and I turned to look at each other simultaneously.

“They are people!”

“They really are!”

The kiosk was no longer the problem.

There were people inside the ghost story.

“Excuse me! You two up ahead!”

I forced my constricted throat to produce as loud a shout as possible, but the two people—who apparently still had plenty of energy—were moving far too quickly. They had already disappeared behind the dense vegetation and did not come back.

“Damn it. Ms. Haebin, hurry. We have to catch them.”

We were in front of the kiosk. A little farther ahead was the fork leading to the West Gate and Gomyut.

If they were ordinary people who knew nothing about the anomalies, either route would end in disaster.

A complete disaster!

Adrenaline hauled my heavy legs into motion. But by the time we forced ourselves to sprint to the fork, no one was there.

“They should have stopped to think! A fork that wasn’t there earlier must have suddenly appeared in front of them, but they just kept going?”

“I really hate ordinary people. Seriously. I really, really do!”

We had to go to Gomyut anyway.

We tried to properly record the anomaly in the reporting box, but the wooden birdhouse-like structure that should have been there had vanished without a trace.

Instead, we had come back.

[Chodam Park—Gomyut]

“Damn it. We came this way earlier too. I think it might have gotten even stranger.”

“See? I told you something was wrong! For fuck’s sake.”

“Don’t swear in public. Besides, I’m the one who said something was wrong first.”

[Our Pond Is Currently]

[Dry] [Low] … [Average] … [High] … [Abundant] … [Perfect]

[Notice]

[Notice]

The two people were arguing in front of the park map, completely unaware of our presence.

The water-level indicator had risen to [High], and notices had been plastered all over the map.

The indicator wasn’t the only thing rising.

So was my blood pressure.

Did they have any idea how hard I’d worked to keep that water level from rising…?

Oh, the back of my neck.

“S-Senior, please calm down. Here, breathe in slowly… and breathe out.”

“I’m not that angry.”

“No. You’re extremely angry right now.”

While I was having a minor squabble with Myeong Haebin over her attempts to make me breathe in, in, out, out, the more oblivious of the two men—the one wearing a headband—approached us.

“Excuse me, are you two trapped here as well? I’m Woo Minhyeong, and this is Park Hyeonho.”

He then pulled down the balaclava covering his face.

He had the ordinary face of a man in his twenties or thirties—the kind you could see anywhere.

How am I supposed to handle this?

This is a ghost story. Ghost stories have rules, and now you have to follow them too. I have no proof, but just do as I say.

Was I supposed to tell them something like that?

And how would they react?

Ah! I see! We didn’t know. We’ll be sure to follow the rules from now on!

Would they say that?

No. I would be lucky if they didn’t call me insane and do something unpredictable.

My head began to throb.

Whoooom—

As though it had grasped the situation, a notification sounded, announcing the arrival of a new achievement.

[] Notification

! Separate yourself from the two civilians. (Incomplete)

You crazy bastard.

Why are you doing this to me too?

The moment I read the new achievement, I swallowed the curse that had risen to the tip of my tongue.

It’s telling me to abandon them, isn’t it?

Civilian or not, as long as those two were here, any mistake they made would hold us jointly responsible.

The vanished Citizen’s Voice Box and that pond were proof.

The pond’s level had risen another notch and was now even higher.

Even from here, despite the distance between us and the pond, I could see the trash fish—now numerous enough to form entire schools—roaming beneath the surface as pitch-black shadows.

At the same time, the park’s trees had grown dense and luxuriant, as though they had fed on the pond’s moisture. Their branches were now laden with thick clusters of leaves.

If those two wandered around disturbing the ghost story without knowing anything, the water level—now only two notches from the top—would rise all the way.

Why had the app shown me an achievement like this?

Did it think I would rejoice at the convenient opportunity and abandon them?

“Excuse me!”

Perhaps unable to endure the unnatural silence as I stared at my phone instead of answering, the man who had introduced himself as Woo Minhyeong called out to me again.

“Senior? Senior? He’s calling you.”

“My ears work just fine.”

“Hehe. You looked like you hadn’t heard him.”

Perhaps she hadn’t seen the notification. Perhaps she had and was pretending otherwise.

Either way, I had already decided on my answer.

“No. I was just organizing my thoughts.”

Even if it meant giving up the achievement reward, I couldn’t leave them behind.

I stared at the man looking at me with evident displeasure.

“So…”

I had two choices.

▷ Pretend we had met them by coincidence.
▷ Reveal that we belonged to Daecheonmyeong.

I thought back to when I had been recruited.

Even though that man had still been alive, Myeong Haebin had casually offered me a job. If so, there was a good chance we were permitted to reveal ourselves to civilians.

But there was one crucial problem.

I don’t know how to escape this ghost story.

Pretending to know what I was doing would make it easier to get them to follow my instructions.

But the moment they discovered that my knowledge was fragmentary, even their fragile trust in me would collapse.

All right.

“We’re trapped here too.”

Senior?

We would pretend to be stranded civilians.

Myeong Haebin glanced at me, apparently surprised by my decision. But when I continued staring at the two men without reacting, she quickly played along.

“That’s right. We, uh… work for a cleaning company nearby. We stepped out for a moment, and then this happened.”

“How long have you—”

“Ten—”

“A little under ten laps.”

I abruptly interrupted Myeong Haebin before she could answer honestly.

Nothing good would come from telling them how many laps we had actually completed. It would be perfect for sending them into a panic, though.

“Gasp! That many? But why? This place really is strange, isn’t it?”

“We thought so too, and we’ve discovered a few rules.”

Good. Pretending to be ordinary civilians was working.

I calmly shared what we knew: we had to find the anomalies and leave through either the East Gate or the West Gate, and the anomalies themselves would not inflict fatal harm on us.

However, the man in the windbreaker, Park Hyeonho, folded his arms and looked down at me with dissatisfaction.

“So what happens if that water-level gauge or whatever goes up?”

“Do you think anything good will happen?”

“You’re making way too big a deal out of being trapped in a park. This is a hidden-camera prank, isn’t it? You two are actors too. Where are the cameras? I don’t know how you pulled all this off, but…”

Ah… He’s going to be a pain in the ass.

Right. Expecting everyone suddenly dropped into a place like this to understand everything was far too optimistic.

“Why don’t we just leave through the road over here? It seems like we’re only going around in circles inside the park, so wouldn’t this work?”

“You’re right! We can do that!”

Would I get sued for hitting someone inside a ghost story?

I didn’t even know whether this place still counted as the Republic of Korea. Couldn’t I just smack him around a little?

“Haa…”

“What? Why don’t we just tell them to leave?”

Possessing even less love for humanity than I did, Myeong Haebin pouted as though she couldn’t care less what happened to them.

“Yes. Go ahead. Leave. Get the hell out of here.”

As I spoke, I threw the sports-drink bottle filled with mud beyond the park’s boundary.

Cr-r-runch!

The plastic bottle struck the boundary and vanished as though it had been shoved into an invisible shredder. Mud sprayed in every direction as the bottle was violently ground apart.

It was a brutal sight that could never be reproduced with stage effects or some hidden-camera prank.

“Uh… Huh? What the fuck?”

Park Hyeonho, who had been so skeptical only moments ago, became flustered.

But I didn’t let up.

“Go on, then. Leave.”

“Come on, this way! Both of you, right over here!”

If they left, that would be great for me. Absolutely wonderful. The achievement would be completed with a cheerful ta-da, and Myeong Haebin, who had looked displeased with them, was practically falling over herself to send them on their way.

Huh?!

This was fantastic!

Perhaps sensing the manic gleam in my eyes, the two men nervously rolled their eyes around.

“Ugh, fuck… I’m not leaving. I just won’t leave, okay?”

“We… We’ll believe you. Sorry.”

It seemed we had frightened them properly.

Good. Things would have been much easier if they had listened from the beginning.

Just then, something caught against the heel of Woo Minhyeong’s foot with a soft thump as he backed away.

A strangely dull and damp cry emerged, like a rusted lump of iron lodged in someone’s throat.

Quack, quack.

I shifted my murderous glare away from Park Hyeonho.

A duck was waddling toward us.

Its eyes, like embedded glass marbles, shone with an artificial gleam as it stared in our direction.

“...A duck?”

It resembled a sculpture made from compacted filth more than a living creature.

Beneath feathers that looked as though they had been mutilated with scissors, raw and ruptured red flesh could be seen. Its legs resembled lengths of pipe joined together, and tautly stretched black plastic bags served as webbed feet.

“A-A monster. There’s a monster…”

“Hngh…!”

The two men, seeing an aberration for the first time, went deathly pale.

Why has that thing come all the way out here?

I had seen it before.

It had only ever floated around in the pond. Occasionally, it would dive beneath the surface and smack its beak as though feeding, but it had never once come ashore.

The duck tilted its head from side to side as if observing us.

Apparently desperate to get away from the bizarre creature, Woo Minhyeong flinched and began sidestepping toward the edge of the path.

“…”

That was when the duck spread both wings wide.

A bird spreading its wings?

The sign beside the pond flashed through my mind.

[Do Not Feed the Wild Birds]

In that case, what did the “food” mentioned on the sign refer to?

“Mr. Woo Minhyeong, watch—!”

It moved slightly faster than I did.

CRUNCH.

It sank its beak deep into the left side of Woo Minhyeong’s calf.

A deluge of blood, far too copious to have come from a mere peck, sprayed all the way to our faces and soaked our cheeks.

Click.

[Our Pond Is Currently]

[Dry] … [Low] … [Average] … [High] … [Abundant] … [Perfect]

That’s only decoration. That’s only decoration—

Behind the grotesque duck came the sound of the rusted water-level gauge moving.

To [Abundant].

“Damn it.”

So the level could rise even without us failing to identify an anomaly.