Chapter 108: The Restorer (4)

Su-myeon’s left eye had really been through a lot.

When Su-myeon blinked at the two doctors’ incomprehensible words, Young-cheol reached out.

Then, covering Su-myeon’s right eye, he asked,

“Can you see this?”

“Of course....”

Why wouldn’t he be able to see when Young-cheol was waving two fingers right in front of his face?

Su-myeon answered as though the question were absurd, but Young-cheol and Jae-hak’s expressions were serious.

“...I can see it. Two. Two fingers.”

At Su-myeon’s answer, Young-cheol and Jae-hak tested him again and again.

In the meantime, perhaps because the initial confusion had passed, or because the medicine had begun to take effect, Su-myeon became more or less able to move around again.

The only unpleasant part was how clammy his body felt after breaking into a cold sweat from the sudden incident.

“So what exactly is wrong with it?”

At Su-myeon’s question, Young-cheol explained it again in simpler terms.

For some unknown reason, the Cyclops Contact Lens was currently stuck to Su-myeon’s left eye.

Normally, through that gray lens, they could naturally see the familiar iris and black pupil behind it.

But now, beyond it, there was simply white emptiness.

All they could see was an empty lens.

“Ha.... Fucking hell.......”

After hearing Young-cheol’s explanation, Su-myeon rubbed his left eye with the back of his hand.

His glasses, which he had thrown off earlier....

“.......”

Looking around, he saw Ju-hee holding them.

Even now, rubbing the lens did not make it move or come off.

And yet the eye that should have been behind it had suddenly vanished.

As absurd as the situation was, Su-myeon had a fairly good idea of what had happened.

'Tribute.'

That damned dokkaebi had apparently eaten his fucking eye instead of the buckwheat jelly it had been offered.

Having suddenly lost one eye, Su-myeon ground out curses in his head.

Since Sa-rin’s question had happened to be the last one, she also wore a guilty expression.

“But the fact that you can still see makes it even stranger.”

Was he supposed to call this a blessing in disguise?

Still confused, Su-myeon sat up for now.

Several people were gathered around the bed he had been lying on, so continuing to lie there felt awkward.

“At least it’s obvious this isn’t something medicine can do anything about.”

Su-myeon resigned himself with a sigh.

What could he do about something that had already happened?

Besides, he had already half given up on his left eye anyway.

Amid all the troubled expressions around him, Su-myeon threw out a joke that did not really land.

“You really got one hell of an initiation, Professor Yoon Jae-hak.”

At Su-myeon’s words, Jae-hak gave a bitter smile as well.

Like Young-cheol, Jae-hak had been unable to return to Shinui Hospital and had remained at the Governance.

Even though the ghost story had disappeared, he had absolutely no desire to work there again.

With a bitter expression, Jae-hak asked,

If this kind of injury could only be treated inside a ghost story anyway.

“If there were a suitable item, could it be replaced?”

“I suppose so, but wouldn’t that be basically the same as now?”

Su-myeon answered while pointing at his left eye.

In any case, thanks to the Cyclops Contact Lens, he had kept his sight.

Paradoxically, it could be said that the eye was still fulfilling its purpose.

“Well then, you’re all probably busy, so you should get back to work.”

As Su-myeon tried to disperse the gazes still fixed on him, Mi-ae abruptly raised her hand.

“Before that! That last thing you asked the dokkaebi on the computer earlier, Chief.”

“Ah, right.”

Sa-rin, who had been standing there with a complicated expression, reacted as well.

The last question Su-myeon had asked the dokkaebi.

It had also been a question posed by the ancestral grandmother deity who had made Sa-rin a shaman and opened her spiritual senses by becoming her possessing deity.

Perhaps because of that.

There was one thing that bothered Su-myeon.

'So is that why she kept Sa-rin from going inside?'

Maybe she had kept Sa-rin outside the boundary of the doorway because if Sa-rin directly interacted with Dokkaebi AI, it might have been Sa-rin whose eye was offered as tribute.

Living or dead, apparently selfish people who only cared about their own descendants were all the same.

Anyway, that was that.

Thinking that trusting shamans too much might be dangerous as well, Su-myeon answered.

“......Yeah. Well. Right. Did some kind of answer come up?”

Mi-ae handed him a printed sheet of paper. It was a map of a certain region.

Apparently, she had decided that since everyone was already gathered here before dispersing, it would be more efficient to explain it now.

It felt a little strange that she had prepared something like that even while he had been collapsed in pain.

In any case, Mi-ae was gradually becoming someone the Governance could not do without.

You did not have to enter a ghost story to do your part.

“It’s a map of some rural corner of Chuncheon.”

His last question had been asking the dokkaebi where it was.

At the same time Su-myeon thought that, Mi-ae pulled out a tablet and opened a map application.

It seemed she had already found the location.

“I think it’s here?”

With that, Mi-ae held out the tablet so everyone could see.

Standing alone on the map was an enormous gray concrete building.

A plain rectangular structure with very few of the windows normally expected on a building, aside from a handful meant for minimal ventilation.

Even in the road-view images, most of the glass windows were shattered, making the place look extremely old and desolate.

Since it was abandoned, no name appeared for it on the map.

“This used to be a data center built by a major corporation, but it was shut down for some reason.”

And as far as Su-myeon knew.

There was exactly one ghost story set in a data center.

“Agent Yoon, I’m going to need you to find a ghost story related to this.”

At Su-myeon’s words, Mi-ae nodded as though she had expected that.

“Yep. I figured you would.”

That concluded the issue everyone needed to confirm together.

When Mi-ae stepped back, Su-myeon put his shoes back on to leave the infirmary and said,

“Anyway, sorry for worrying everyone.”

At Su-myeon’s words, everyone wore strange expressions and could not answer immediately.

After all, the cause of Su-myeon’s collapse had not been resolved, and he had suddenly lost one of his eyes.

It felt like something they should not simply move past like this.

But there was nothing else they could really do.

And the resourceful Mi-ae organized the contents of the suspected ghost stories faster than expected and called another meeting.

***

This was the kind of ghost story that commonly circulated online in the form of a written account.

Someone had translated and adapted a ghost story from an overseas community, but no definitive original that it could clearly be traced back to had ever been found.

The prevailing opinion was that someone had been inspired by an abandoned data center and simply made the story up.

Others claimed that the original poster really existed and that it was a real account of something that had actually happened.

But one thing was certain.

This story had spread extremely widely as a ghost story.

[Ghost Story] My friend disappeared. Either that, or I’ve gone insane. -1

It’s been exactly seven days since my coworker J went missing.

The things that have been happening since then are so strange that I’m leaving this as a record.

Seriously, it’s weird.

Everyone acts like that guy never existed in the first place.

For the first few days, I thought people were messing with me while he was on vacation.

But even his phone number disappeared from my phone.

Now I’m honestly getting scared that maybe I really have gone insane.

Anyway, I’ll explain the situation.

I have this feeling that if I don’t leave some kind of record, I’ll end up forgetting everything too, so I’m going to go into some detail.

Not that I think anyone is actually reading this....

Anyway, the two of us worked together managing the server room on the second floor of Building B, so we were fairly close.

Not best friends or anything.

This was the last text J sent me.

“Was there always a CRT monitor behind rack 14 in row 7? It’s powered on?”

Ah, to be completely honest, the wording probably isn’t 100% exact.

Now his number and every other record are completely gone, so this is just what I remember.

Anyway, just understand that it said something along those lines.

I’m sure which rack he meant.

There was this weirdly tangled cable at that spot, and I had a hell of a time sorting it out.

I remember because it was a black LAN cable we weren’t using.

Maybe some contractor came in to connect something and left it behind....

This is kind of off topic. Anyway, back to my friend.

The problem is, that was the last time I heard from him.

After that, his access card logs and CCTV footage both stopped.

No, more accurately, he disappeared from every record.

Even from people’s memories.

Fuck. Is that even possible?

I seriously thought I was losing my mind.

Of course I went back to the spot myself.

Behind rack 14 in row 7.

And it really was there.

You know those old CRT monitors. The ones with the huge backs.

Of course, when I saw it, the power was off.

But I couldn’t just leave after seeing that.

I hesitated for a while, but I turned it on anyway.

I thought maybe something had been left behind.

When I switched on the screen, there was a prompt window open.

There was just one line written there.

System: New biological node connection complete.

I seriously don’t know anymore.

Everyone else looks at it and acts like, so what?

Apparently, every once in a while, old equipment gets left connected like that.

They say if it isn’t causing problems, you just leave it alone and avoid touching it as much as possible.

Everyone told me to leave it alone.

Am I seriously the only one overreacting?

Or have I actually gone insane....

***

[Ghost Story] My friend disappeared. Either that, or I’ve gone insane. -2

Thanks for taking my story seriously, everyone.

But is that story someone posted in the comments actually true?

The one about a factory worker being bullied to death and then every employee at the factory pretending he had never existed in the first place?

Honestly, that story gave me chills.

I didn’t mention this last time, but J grew up in an orphanage, so he doesn’t have any relatives.

And, actually, it’s true that both me and him get treated kind of like outcasts at this center.

At least I have a family....

Nothing actually happened to him, right?

Anyway, the guy who told me that story also said I should report it to the police.

That gave me the courage to do it, so I filed a report.

But I guess because he’s an adult man and I’m not family, they can’t tell me the details.

The police said they’d look into it, so if I hear anything new about that, I’ll let you know too.

And about the people saying that if I want to know whether I’m insane or not, I have to investigate this properly all the way to the end.

I especially agree with that.

Whatever this is, if I dig into whatever feels suspicious, won’t I eventually reach some kind of conclusion?

So, like you guys suggested, I backed up the logs onto a USB drive.

I’m at work right now, and I’m writing this after checking it.

I can’t find anything unusual in the prompt itself.

System: New biological node connection complete.

That’s literally all it says, so I wasn’t sure what else I could do and just copied the entire system dump file.

But I have no idea what kind of file this is.

Does anyone know what this is?

[Attached Files: 1]

I’ll attach the file, so if anyone recognizes it, let me know.

***

[Ghost Story] My friend disappeared. Either that, or I’ve gone insane. -3

Who the fuck just emailed me?

Stop screwing with me. I’m seriously not in the mood for jokes right now.

This is fucking serious.