Chapter 31

Chodam Park- West Gate (10)

It truly was—

[Your guilt has been separated and disposed of.]

—horrifyingly wonderful.

The suffocating sensation that had filled my insides, the nausea that had threatened to spill from my mouth at any moment, and even my uncontrollable tears all vanished in an instant.

I touched the strangely damp corners of my eyes.

“Why was I crying?”
“Senior, are you all right?”
“...Oh, right. That civilian died.”

Was that really worth crying over?

I couldn’t understand it.

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

Myeong Haebin tilted her head and peered at me.

“No particular reason. I just find it fascinating.”
“What’s fascinating?”

After studying me from close enough that the tips of our noses nearly touched, Myeong Haebin stepped back with a bright smile.

“I meant that I like how you seem different from everyone else, Senior.”

It must have been the effect of Waste Separation.

Leaving Myeong Haebin to wring out the waterlogged hem of her uniform, I turned on my phone to inspect the newly acquired feature.

[The Waste Separation tutorial has been completed.]

[Waste Separation]

Designate and dispose of something useless.

Range: Things possessed by Kim Hanmu

It was a remarkably simple explanation.

Should I test it?

Can I dispose of my uniform?

[Would you like to separate and dispose of Uniform (Daecheonmyeong)?]

[Y] [N]

So it worked on physical objects as well as emotions.

After pressing [N], I looked at Myeong Haebin, who was twisting her wet hair to squeeze out the water.

[This item cannot be separated and disposed of.]

I had wanted to test the scope of “things possessed by Kim Hanmu,” but apparently people were excluded.

Was it because a person could not be owned?

Can something that has been disposed of be recovered?

[No answer can be provided.]

That counted as a question too?

How strict.

Still, now that I had rehydrated, my refreshed mind was capable of thinking properly again.

“Senior, are you finished drying yourself?”

It was impossible to dry herself completely, but Myeong Haebin had removed most of the water. She approached me and let out a deep sigh.

“You didn’t wring out a thing. What were you doing? You’ll catch a cold!”
“It’s fine. We’ll be leaving soon.”

If my theory was correct, it would undoubtedly have returned.

I shook out my damp hair and stood. Pond water poured from the legs of my trousers.

“Let’s go.”
“Don’t blame me if you regret it.”
“When have I ever asked you to take responsibility for me?”

I firmly grasped her hand and strode into the fog.

Perhaps because my thirst had been quenched, even my waterlogged steps felt light.

The sign standing beside the path, where there wasn’t even a fork, indicated only the west gate.

It had to be the exit leading outside.

The convenience-store owner had been right.

Once I threw garbage into the perfect pond, a way out appeared.

“It’s the west gate! Senior, it’s the west gate! Wait, but I thought there was an anomaly this time too...”

Myeong Haebin had been practically jumping for joy, but her voice gradually faded away before she could finish.

“Isn’t it strange? The fish and the temporary booth were both anomalies. So why didn’t Gomyut appear even though there was a monster in the pond?”

Bzzzt—

[Completion Requirement: Clean the pond in the ghost story, Chodam Park.]

“The loop and all the anomalies were nothing but bait.”
“What?! After everything we went through?!”

I couldn’t shake the feeling that we had been deceived.

Turning my back on the sign marking the exit, I walked away without hesitation.

“Let’s go clean the pond.”
“You could at least finish explaining before you leave! And we don’t have any equipment right now...”

Rather than waste time answering, I retraced our steps.

The convenience store came first.

I untied the cord securing the tarpaulin. The aberration was still absent, but all the items I needed remained inside.

Then I headed directly to the temporary booth and grabbed a fistful of neatly folded plastic bags.

“Rip some of these open. Tear only the side and bottom so each one becomes a single sheet of plastic.”
“We don’t have any tools.”

“If you don’t have a knife, use your teeth.”

The plastic bags were thinner than standard garbage bags. When I bit into one with my canine teeth and pulled, it tore easily.

The line was uneven, but that didn’t matter.

We could join the pieces using the duct tape I had taken from the convenience store.

Reluctantly cutting the plastic with her teeth, Myeong Haebin asked,

“Please explain. What did you mean when you called it bait?”
“What was this park’s loop like?”
“It was incredibly long. It took away our food, gave us nothing to drink, and the anomalies... Well, they weren’t that dangerous, but they were irritating.”

Those characteristics all had one thing in common.

“This park’s loop exists to make people walk endlessly until they’re completely exhausted. Once they become severely dehydrated, they’ll eventually drink from the pond that looks cleaner than anything else.”
“Without realizing that an actual monster is waiting beneath the surface with its mouth open.”
“Exactly.”

I casually answered while tearing off another strip of duct tape with my teeth. Sticky adhesive clung to my canine.

“We were being deceived from the very beginning. The water-level gauge rose whenever we submitted a wrong answer, making us fixate on the idea that we had to find the anomalies.”

It had exploited our preconceptions.

More precisely, the water-level gauge had blinded us.

If the gauge rose whenever we incorrectly marked an anomaly or violated something that appeared to be one of the park’s rules, we would naturally focus on the gauge rather than the pond’s increasing pollution.

“We were so focused on the loop that we failed to notice the pond becoming more polluted. By the time we did, we had already lost our chance at an easy escape.”
“We misunderstood everything from the beginning. We should have just participated in the environmental campaign.”
“We didn’t know that at the time.”

While the pollution worsened, the monster in the pond had steadily accumulated strength.

Eventually, the meaning of the head depicted on the hook of the No Fishing sign became clear.

By throwing a human into the pond, we could lure out the fish—the monster.

Offering the monster a special sacrifice had opened the exit for us.

But if we simply left now, what would happen to the cleanup?

Now that the monster was the only garbage remaining in the pond, there was only one way to clean it.

“That should do it.”

Clenching my molars, I tore off and secured the final strip of duct tape, completing a custom-made garbage bag larger than Myeong Haebin and me combined.

“No, this won’t work. It’s definitely going to tear! That monster is as big as the two of us put together, and it must be insanely strong!”
“Did the duck have teeth?”

I had something I was counting on.

Tool Enhancement clearly said it applied to every garbage bag I use.

We had also used one of these bags to capture the duck, so there was no need to worry about whether it qualified as a garbage bag.

“How are we supposed to spread out something this big? And how will we lure the monster here?”
“Since when did you have so little faith in me, Haebin?”
“You’ve been acting strange for a while now, Senior...”

I roughly patted Myeong Haebin’s head several times before handing her the enormous plastic bag we had made.

“That’s the narrowest part of the path, and the fog is thickest there... You understand, right?”

Myeong Haebin bit her lip throughout my explanation, then finally nodded.

“I understand. Honestly, Senior, you’ll be the death of me.”

After gathering up the duct tape and our custom-made plastic bag, Myeong Haebin stood and disappeared into the fog.

I watched her leave, then headed in the opposite direction toward the pond.

The pond remained pristine.

It was so clear that no one would ever imagine a monster capable of swallowing a person in an instant lived within it.

“Hmm...”

I dipped my hand into the cool water and gently stirred it.

There was no sign of the monster. Not even a ripple disturbed the tranquil pond apart from those created by my hand.

I expected as much.

Why had the duck attacked Park Hyeonho?

Woo Minhyeong had been close to it, so that could explain why it attacked him. But the duck had remained docile while I searched for it, only to charge at Park Hyeonho the moment he came ashore.

The monster had not attacked us either.

Even after I jumped into the pond and did everything imaginable, it hadn’t shown so much as the tip of its nose.

There was one difference between Woo Minhyeong and Park Hyeonho—and us.

The Chodam Park Proper Environmental Guardian bracelets.

“It was strange that we could take them off.”

The aberration at the temporary booth had asked us:

Are you garbage?

In this park, anyone without a bracelet was considered garbage.

I removed the green rubber bracelet and dropped it into the pond.

Bubble.

A bubble rose from a distant part of the pond.

“Yeah.”

I had chosen to become garbage myself.

An enormous volume of bubbles surged up from the bottom of the pond. The instant my instincts made me retreat—

Rooooar—!

The surface erupted, and the gigantic axolotl-shaped monster burst through the column of water.

Its jaws snapped shut on the empty space where I had been standing.

Had I moved even one second later, the sheer force of its bite would have torn off my entire upper body.

—Keeeeek! Grrrgh!

Having missed its prey, the monster emitted a grotesque shriek and dragged its massive body ashore.

It had lost the agility it possessed underwater, but its overwhelming mass remained unchanged. Every time it planted a foot on the ground, the discarded tires, crushed cans, rotting nets, and other garbage tangled across its body rustled and clanged together in an ominous cacophony.

It looked perfect for throwing away.

Maybe we should have made the bag even bigger.

Without looking back, I hurled myself into the dense fog.

Boom! Boom! Clang!

The vibrations of the pursuing monster crushing the ground behind me made the earth tremble like an earthquake.

My thigh muscles, already abused to their absolute limit, screamed as though they might snap at any moment.

Where is it?

The narrowest trail, where the fog hung thickest.

The monster thrust its head into the narrow passage as it pursued me, its jaws so close that they were nearly within reach.

At that moment, I finally found it.

A flat strip lying across the middle of the path, disguised as a tree branch.

The duct tape.

I ducked and slid across the ground, snatching the tape and pulling it downward with all my strength and body weight.

“Haebin, hold on tight!”

Riiip—!

The mouth of the enormous plastic bag, which had been precariously suspended from the trees on both sides of the path, spread wide like a cast net and dropped over the monster’s head.

If the garbage was too large to carry over to the bag—

Then I simply had to make the garbage crawl into the bag on its own.

“Whoa! Senior, catch me!”

Myeong Haebin had climbed a tree to secure the mouth of the bag. When she lost her balance and fell, I leaped beneath her.

She landed squarely on top of me with a heavy thud, but it wasn’t as though I had expected to catch her gracefully.

“Huh?! The mouth of the bag!”

There was no time to worry about the sharp ache in my back from striking something. I seized the bag’s opening with both hands, preventing it from being pulled completely open as the monster dragged it away.

Grrrgh! Keeek!

The monster had come in search of prey only to find itself trapped inside translucent plastic. It flailed wildly, emitting screams that sounded as though its vocal cords were riddled with holes, making its entire body convulse.

“Urgh...!”

It whipped its long tail near the bag’s opening, sending me flying into the bushes along with it.

Sweat seeped across my palms as I nearly lost my grip on the edge of the bag.

I had never tried disposing of moving garbage before.

Myeong Haebin, who had already jumped off me, fearlessly climbed onto the monster near its tail and squeezed as much air as possible out of the bag.

Even then, it wasn’t enough.

“It’s too big! We won’t be able to tie it shut!”
“Give me the tape!”

The instant Myeong Haebin released one hand to remove the tape hanging from her wrist, the monster thrashed violently and hurled away the unwanted passenger sitting on its tail.

“Aaagh!”

Myeong Haebin flew through the air, and I heard her slam hard into something solid—presumably a tree.

There was no time to look back.

“Damn it!”

The tape that had fallen from her wrist rolled toward me, coming within reach. But with one source of pressure gone, the monster twisted around, reversing the positions of its head and tail.

—Keeek! Kkagrak!

As if deciding that if it couldn’t tear through the bag, it would chew me up along with the plastic, it opened its jaws wide.

Why do all the aberrations around here have such disgusting teeth?!

Its green gums were packed with sharp shards of metal. “Industrial shredder” suited it better than “mouth.”

A burst of white breath spread through the plastic, obscuring my vision.

Got it!

Just before the monster closed its jaws, I leaned my upper body as far back as possible and snatched the duct tape with my outstretched hand.

I caught the protruding end between my teeth, pulled out a long strip, and wrapped it around the mouth of the bag that I still held.

Crunch.

Instead of me, the monster bit down on a wad of plastic. It heaved its massive body and crushed my ankle beneath its foot, producing a deeply unpleasant sound.

“Damn it! I did exactly what you wanted! When the hell are you going to collect it?!”

That was when it happened.

A black-hole-like void opened in midair.

The immense emptiness was large enough to swallow me and several monsters the size of the one in the shallow pond.

It swallowed the entire space containing the bag and the monster trapped inside it.

Gulp.

Strange as it might sound, at that moment, I could feel with my entire body that a new string of text had been entered.

[Completion Requirement: Clean the pond in the ghost story, Chodam Park.]

[Complete]