Chapter 27

Chodam Park—West Gate (6)

It was a complete shitshow.

“Statistically speaking, fewer than ten percent of ordinary civilians who fall into a ghost story escape with all four limbs intact. Couldn’t this simply be one of those cases?”

“You just think he’s getting in the way.”

“Why would you put it like that? I’m saying it’s the most efficient solution in several respects.”

“Minhyeong… Woo Minhyeong…”

It was enough to make me want to lose my mind too.

My eyes met the duck’s.

“Quap. Kweh. Chomp.”

Apparently almost finished eating Woo Minhyeong’s head, it was opening and closing its beak more slowly now.

At least one of us had to keep it together.

“Mr. Park Hyeonho, get up.”

Park Hyeonho had crawled over and taken Woo Minhyeong’s cooling hand in his own, his cheek swollen from Myeong Haebin’s punch.

I grabbed him by the nape and forcibly hauled him to his feet.

“Let go! You said it wouldn’t attack us! You said the gauge was just decoration! Nothing you said was right! This is all your fault!”

Park Hyeonho violently knocked my hand away. Breathing heavily, he pointed at me as though ready to tear me apart.

“I didn’t know either.”

“You think that makes it okay? Does it?!”

We didn’t have time for this.

I glanced toward the duck while trying to suppress my growing impatience, then looked down at Park Hyeonho again.

“Then would you like to die too?”

Both Myeong Haebin and the app were urging me to abandon him.

I wasn’t the kind of person who could watch someone die and then sleep soundly afterward, but my attempt to save him was still an act of goodwill—unwanted meddling on my part.

I had a clear order of priorities.

If my life and Park Hyeonho’s were placed on a scale from which neither of us could escape, I would choose myself without hesitation.

So for his own sake, I hoped he wouldn’t wear away any more of my patience.

“I-I…”

Humans were alone in the end.

No matter how close Woo Minhyeong had been to Park Hyeonho, that relationship became insignificant in the face of his own impending death.

Even more so now that Woo Minhyeong was already dead.

“Then let go of him, get up, and prepare to run.”

I grabbed him by the nape again and pulled him up.

His face drenched in tears, Park Hyeonho looked back and forth between Woo Minhyeong and me. Then he placed his hands on his knees and rose.

Myeong Haebin watched me with a frustrated expression before clicking her tongue and turning away.

“We’re going to run? That thing was ridiculously fast just now.”

“It’s still better than standing here.”

“QUACK!”

The duck spread its wings and waddled slowly toward us, as if threatening us.

“...Fuck!”

We pushed Park Hyeonho from behind as he swallowed a scream, narrowly slipped past the duck, and broke into a run.

I volunteered to bring up the rear and glanced back.

Part of me had hoped it would return to Woo Minhyeong, but the duck followed us instead.

Once again, it did not fly.

“Ms. Haebin, did you check the anomalies?”

“There was nothing special. Just the recurring anomalies.”

In that case, we only needed to record the temporary booth, the pond, and the duck.

The duck itself was one enormous anomaly. Should I be grateful that the ghost story possessed at least that much conscience?

“Go ahead and record them. I’ll bring Mr. Hyeonho.”

“Yes! Don’t be late!”

Myeong Haebin had to be just as exhausted as the rest of us, but she increased her pace and ran ahead.

Park Hyeonho wasn’t doing well.

“What did I… ever do wrong? Sniff… Hngh…”

His cheeks were streaked with sweat and tears.

I placed a hand against his back.

“Crying while you run will only drain your strength faster.”

He looked at me as though I were insane.

It wasn’t that I couldn’t understand how he felt, but this ghost story was a battle of endurance.

Tears were moisture too. Losing them wouldn’t do him any good.

“Quack… Quack.”

The duck’s cries gradually faded into the distance before suddenly stopping altogether.

[Chodam Park—Gomyut]

It seemed we had returned to the park’s starting point.

This was where the duck had torn into Woo Minhyeong’s leg, yet all the blood that had drenched the ground had vanished without a trace.

Can’t the duck travel through the loop?

Perhaps that was only natural for an anomaly.

Fortunately, the water-level gauge didn’t appear to have risen any further.

Of course, the park’s altered environment remained unchanged—the drooping, overgrown trees and the suffocatingly dense mist.

“Haah… Haah… Just a moment…”

We finally made it back to the pond, but Park Hyeonho’s legs gave out just as he was about to cross the stepping-stones. He collapsed despite the trash fish splashing in the water below him.

“Let’s rest here for a little while.”

“I’ve been waiting for you to say that…”

As though she had truly been waiting, Myeong Haebin bent over with her hands on her knees.

I crouched on the stone beside Park Hyeonho.

In truth, my stamina was already near its limit.

My throat felt as though I had swallowed sand, and the irritation had progressed to the point that I could taste blood. My thighs and the soles of my feet burned as though they had been scorched.

As I kicked away the trash fish that kept trying to climb onto the stepping-stone, Park Hyeonho spoke without turning his head.

“...You seem used to this.”

“I’m not sure what you mean.”

“Someone just died.”

Park Hyeonho’s voice sounded hollow, as though he had let go of something.

It wasn’t exactly aggressive.

But it was sharp enough to wound.

“Quack. Quack.”

I opened my mouth to answer, only to hear the cry I had hoped never to hear again.

I grabbed Park Hyeonho’s shoulder as he tried to leap to his feet.

“Wait.”

“W-Why?!”

The duck’s glass-marble eyes appeared between the bushes.

It watched us with that peculiar avian tilt of its head, yet it did nothing but endlessly pace around the edge of the pond.

“I don’t think it can enter.”

What was inside this pond?

Why couldn’t the duck return to the place where it had lived? And why were the fish struggling so desperately to reach land?

I wanted to peer into the pond, but the bubbles and shadows created by the trash fish’s fins made it impossible to see beneath the surface.

Wasn’t this fish once a bread wrapper lying beside the pond?

I raised my head and realized that all the garbage previously scattered along the shore had vanished.

It seemed to have transformed into the fish in the pond, but what connection did that have to the loop?

No. The fish weren’t important right now.

Myeong Haebin, who had been locked in a staring contest with the duck, spoke.

“Aren’t we trapped here?”

“If we keep sprinting like before and resting here each time… I wonder what’ll happen.”

“We can probably keep escaping it. But we’ll miss the anomalies.”

Finding anomalies while fleeing from the duck at full speed would be nearly impossible.

If we missed even one, the already precarious water-level gauge would reach its maximum.

In that case, we had to make the duck disappear.

Is that possible?

There was that mysterious skill the app had given me after I completed the previous achievement.

[Tool Enhancement: Garbage Bag]

You can now discard what cannot be discarded.

Effective Range: Every garbage bag used by Kim Hanmu.

It wasn’t clear what counted as “something that could not be discarded.”

But people didn’t normally put living creatures into garbage bags and throw them away.

Just try it. This is our best chance right now.

We had lost all our equipment, but I still had the plastic bag from the temporary booth, where it had been provided as part of another environmental campaign.

It was specifically meant to hold garbage, and it was now in my hands.

Surely that meant it could be considered one of my garbage bags.

“Senior, where are you going?”

“Wait here.”

I slowly crossed the stepping-stones.

At some point, the duck that had been watching us vanished.

It would probably appear on the opposite side, just as it had with Woo Minhyeong.

But even after I reached the shore, the duck didn’t appear.

Were all my assumptions wrong?

Was I wrong that the duck considered us food?

Was I also wrong that it would follow us to the opposite side?

I tensely pushed through the bushes, deliberately making noise, but there wasn’t even a glimpse of the duck.

“Senior! How is it?!”

Myeong Haebin shouted from the other side.

“I think it’s safe! Come across!”

I had searched for quite a while without it appearing, so it was probably fine.

Myeong Haebin bounded across the stepping-stones, followed by Park Hyeonho.

“Come on. I’ll help you.”

“C-Can I really…?”

Park Hyeonho took hold of my forearm.

The moment his foot touched the ground—

“QUAAAAACK!”

The duck launched itself from the very bushes I had just searched, its beak stretched wide open.

Its mouth was a mess of blood, flesh, hair, and skin, with layer upon layer of sharp teeth arranged in several concentric rows.

Why now, of all times?!

I released Park Hyeonho and opened the plastic bag clenched in my hand.

“Urgh…!”

The duck crashed into the bag before I could fully open its mouth, and its weight knocked me off balance.

My shoulder struck the ground with a heavy thud. It was the same shoulder that had been burned, and a deep ache surged through it.

“Quack! Quack!”

The duck struggled violently to escape.

Suddenly shrouded in plastic, it thrashed its wings, leaped about, and snapped its beak repeatedly.

“Hold still…!”

I had personally tied enough official garbage bags to fill several trucks.

I shoved the duck’s neck deeper into the bag, seized the opening, and pulled it downward to squeeze out the air. Then I swung it through the air several times.

“QUACK! QUAAACK!!”

I twisted the thinned neck of the bag into a knot and pulled it tight.

The cries that had been filling the area abruptly stopped, as though someone had switched off the power.

Thump.

A garbage bag containing something resembling a clump of feathers dropped onto the damp ground.

“...Huh.”

It really worked.

What lay inside the bag was no longer a living, writhing, grotesque duck.

It had become compacted garbage, as though it had been forcibly crushed beneath a toothed industrial press.

But before I could examine what it had become, it disappeared.

It literally evaporated, plastic bag and all, as though it had never existed.

It was as if the garbage had been collected the instant I threw it away.

The app sent me a new message.

[Good do. Keep cleaning! □]

There was a duck emoji.

Had the app taken the garbage bag after all?

Even if it did, what’s with the way it’s talking?

The tone of that sentence seemed strange.

I didn’t think it had spoken like that before.

Yet nothing had changed in any of the other tabs.

When I checked another screen and came back, the message had vanished again.

“What did you just do?”

Myeong Haebin broke the silence.

“Senior, how did you do that? Huh? Tell me!”

Her eyes sparkling, Myeong Haebin rushed over and inspected both my hands. Then she began patting me all over as though searching my body.

How was I supposed to explain this?

After remaining frozen for a while, I finally managed to force out an answer.

“I… don’t know? I just thought it might work.”

“Senior, you’re a genius! The greatest talent in our entire company!”

It was an extremely suspicious answer, but Myeong Haebin looked ready to hoist me into the air and toss me in celebration if she could.

“You’re not normal…”

Right.

That was the normal reaction.

His face pale, Park Hyeonho slowly backed away from me, leaving bloody footprints on the ground.

Ordinary people were jealous or afraid of the unfamiliar.

If they saw someone shove a monstrous duck into a garbage bag and make the entire thing disappear, fear was the appropriate response.

“Are you all right?”

I gently pushed Myeong Haebin aside and approached Park Hyeonho.

Terrified, he frantically rubbed his hands together.

“I mean… No, I’m sorry. I kept getting in your way.”

We were inside a ghost story where common sense did not apply.

Perhaps it had been unreasonable to expect an ordinary civilian, who knew nothing about such things, to respond properly.

After Woo Minhyeong’s death, Park Hyeonho seemed to have half lost his mind. I decided there was no point in pressing him any further.

“It’s fine. Let’s go.”

“W-Where…?”

Despite his dazed question, I could still taste blood in my throat.

Defeating one monster hadn’t ended this goddamned loop.

I nudged one of the duck’s remaining feathers with the tip of my shoe and stared through the mist.

“My blood sugar’s low.”

Now that we had gotten the situation somewhat under control, it was time to raid that damned kiosk we hadn’t managed to return to earlier.