Chapter 115: CARE (1)

What was he supposed to do with this?

Su-myeon stared at Ryang, who lay unconscious in the exact form she had taken inside the ghost story, then pressed a hand to his forehead.

'First, for now....'

After thinking for a moment, Su-myeon raised his phone and called Hwi-yeon.

Hwi-yeon answered before the first ring had even finished.

“We’re out.”

Immediately after Su-myeon’s call, the agents searching the abandoned data center finally managed to locate the group.

Everyone had been waiting in the second-floor server room where the entrance had been, but they had all fallen onto basement level 3.

Perhaps the real entrance had actually been down here, while the connection aboveground had merely been linked through data so it could lure people in more effectively.

Like a spider setting a trap and waiting for prey.

It had merely spread its threads everywhere, and the web they had noticed happened to be there.

But now even that theory would remain nothing more than one possibility.

“Aaaagh!”

“Sniff.... W-where... where the hell is this....”

“W-what? Who are all of you?!”

“It hurts... it hurts...! Please... please get these things off me!”

As time passed, several survivors woke after receiving the appropriate antidotes and medication, and chaos broke out.

Their last memories were all of wandering inside the ghost story.

So they looked extremely confused.

In any case, the ghost story that had tormented them was now over, and they had regained their freedom.

“It doesn’t look like you’re seriously injured anywhere....”

Hwi-yeon said with an expression that showed she still could not relax as she looked Su-myeon over from every angle.

Su-myeon shrugged to show that he was fine, but Hwi-yeon continued staring at him.

“Shouldn’t you at least get a CT scan? You said you were caught in an explosion, didn’t you? You might only look fine.”

That was true.

But Su-myeon was tired and found the idea a little bothersome, so he waved his hand dismissively.

Hwi-yeon backed down at that, but once they returned to Seoul, he would probably be subjected to every examination imaginable.

In any case, after taking a step back, Hwi-yeon gave him a brief report on the cleanup.

“There are sixteen survivors in total who made it out after being rescued. That number includes Mr. Song Jae-min, who you said entered with you, and he’ll be giving a statement soon as well.”

There was also the nondisclosure agreement. And everything else.

Song Jae-min would now have to discuss all sorts of things he would be held responsible for.

Su-myeon nodded at Hwi-yeon’s words and asked.

“What about the footage?”

“......They say there’s something in the data, but the file won’t open. I’m thinking of sending it in for forensic analysis.”

So it seemed that something had actually remained in the video data.

If they could continue leaving video records whenever they entered ghost stories in the future.

It would probably make things more convenient, but he could think about that again when he had more time.

“Ryang.... No, the dokkaebi?”

At Su-myeon’s question, Hwi-yeon frowned with a strange expression.

Even without an explanation, it was rather difficult to pass off Ryang’s appearance as human.

They could perhaps make up some excuse that her appearance had been altered by a ghost story.

“......For now, I put her in my car with Mu-yeon.”

They had anesthetics ready.

Antidotes too.

Her body itself was no different from that of an ordinary human.

The horn and differently colored eyes she had possessed even inside the ghost story were inhuman, but they were still things they could somehow explain away.

As long as it was not a mutation so extreme that communication itself became impossible, like Mu-yeon’s, they might be able to do something about it.

The problem was the simple fact that they had brought something that was not human out into reality.

“I actually asked Sa-rin about it already.”

Hwi-yeon said that as she raised her phone and showed him her conversation with Sa-rin.

“She said it would probably be best to bring her to the office.”

Sa-rin’s explanation had been clear.

Now that White Night Land was gone, the site where their office stood was practically an empty house.

They should bring Ryang there, feed her well, raise her properly, and let the place establish itself as dokkaebi territory.

Apparently, it was not particularly impossible for a dokkaebi to manifest through an object.

In the end, the implication was that they did not need to worry about a dokkaebi simply wandering around reality.

It was strange hearing something like that from a shaman, but if she was saying Ryang was not harmful for now, then was it fine.......

[Is Chief Han Su-myeon the one looking at this right now?]

Of course a shaman would know.

While Su-myeon was reading the conversation between Mu-yeon and Sa-rin, Sa-rin sent another message.

[I met Director Jang Bok-eum today.]

Why was she suddenly bringing that man up?

While Su-myeon wondered about it, Sa-rin said something even stranger.

[Did you two know each other before you started doing this work? Are you family, perhaps?]

Su-myeon frowned at the message that followed.

What the hell was that supposed to mean?

Just as he was about to reply.

[Agent Go Ju-hee]

A call came in on Hwi-yeon’s phone.

After seeing the name on the screen, Su-myeon showed it to Hwi-yeon and answered the call himself.

He assumed that if it was Ju-hee, she would simply be asking whether he was safe.

“Hello?”

She would probably be happy to hear his voice after he had once again made it out safely.

That was what Su-myeon thought, but the response was nothing like what he expected.

He heard a sharp intake of breath, followed by an abrupt statement from the other end of the call.

-Manager Park disappeared!

***

“What does that even mean? What do you mean, disappeared?”

After being told to return as quickly as possible, Hwi-yeon drove back to the office with astonishing skill.

Perhaps it was fortunate that there were no cars on the road at dawn, allowing her to speed as much as she wanted.

As Su-myeon entered the office and spoke, all the employees who had been sitting together stood up at once.

Sa-rin was there as well, though he did not know when she had arrived.

But despite everyone getting to their feet like that, no one spoke first.

“It seems like... he may have been dragged into a ghost story.”

The first to finally speak was Mi-ae, who looked deeply troubled.

Not only her, but the others all wore complicated expressions for various reasons.

The fact that Mi-ae had forgotten his existence was itself evidence that he had entered a ghost story.

“A new ghost story hasn’t appeared here.”

Although it was still dawn, Sa-rin had rushed over at Ju-hee’s request, and unlike usual, her face was completely bare without a trace of makeup.

“I checked everything, all the way down to the basement, and this place really is still empty. I don’t think he disappeared from here....”

“But.......”

At Sa-rin’s words, Ji-hoon trailed off and spoke cautiously.

“......This... was on the manager’s desk. Could it mean something?”

What Ji-hoon held out, saying it had been sitting on Du-pal’s desk, was the attendance register they had brought back from the Infinite School Grounds.

Why was this here?

Hadn’t Su-myeon put it in the safe in his own office in the first place?

Su-myeon asked in confusion.

“We already finished everything there, didn’t we?”

How long had it been since they had gone there?

Ju-hee nodded at Su-myeon’s words.

“That’s why it’s strange. And....”

Ju-hee continued restlessly, looking extremely anxious and uncomfortable.

“Didn’t any of you notice? Ever since Mujin High School, Manager Park has been strangely... quiet. He barely said anything.”

...Now that he thought about it, she was right.

After a certain point, Du-pal’s presence had faded so much that it was almost as though he were not there at all.

There was a lot of work.

He was tired.

Su-myeon had assumed it was something like that.

“He just... felt strange. Do you think he might have gone in there? That ghost story was a little unusual too.”

Mujin High School, which restored people to the healthiest bodies of their youth.

Could Du-pal really have been interested in something like that?

Su-myeon had only thought of him as a cheerful, good-natured middle-aged man.

In truth, he had never taken much interest in him, so he knew very little about him.

Su-myeon opened the attendance register for now.

As he flipped through the pages, he noticed something strange and stopped.

One page had been torn out.

“......What is this? It wasn’t like this before.”

Ju-hee, who had written the related report, said she remembered it clearly.

Then had Du-pal torn this page out?

As Su-myeon looked around, sensing something was wrong, Ju-hee beside him suddenly remembered something.

“This! That was the page. The page with the photo of student Park Geon-su.”

At those words, a chill swept over Su-myeon.

Was this what it felt like for the blood to drain from your head?

'Park Geon-su.'

Hearing that name reminded him of something.

Come to think of it, Du-pal had definitely mentioned having a child.

But after transferring to this bizarre workplace that involved nothing but overtime, had he ever once mentioned his family objecting or worrying?

Even though they obviously would not have been pleased.

He had never once complained or expressed dissatisfaction about anything like that.

Su-myeon had not even heard him talk about doing anything with his family on his days off.

It was not impossible for a middle-aged head of household to live that way, but Du-pal had always seemed like the family-oriented type.

“......Does anyone know Manager Park’s child’s name, gender, or age?”

At Su-myeon’s words, everyone merely exchanged glances.

Apparently none of them knew, because not a single person spoke.

Seeing that, Sa-rin spoke in disbelief.

“Seriously? How can all of you work together and be that uninterested in him?”

This was the point when Su-myeon began to understand Ju-hee’s uncomfortable expression.

His own expression was probably not much different now.

Du-pal had generally been cheerful and generally lacked much presence, and because of that, they had overlooked far too much.

Being confronted with how little attention they had paid him brought with it a strange sense of guilt.

“The manager... might not have been dragged into a ghost story.”

He might have walked into it with his own two feet.

Su-myeon began to feel almost certain of one possibility.

Why had he not noticed?

Du-pal had been subtly subdued ever since that incident.

Why had Su-myeon failed to notice how he had been standing one step back, watching everything unfold and waiting for an opportunity?!

Su-myeon hurriedly searched Du-pal’s workspace, trying to turn his theory into certainty.

Thanks to Du-pal’s tidy way of handling work, all the materials were neatly organized in rows.

But then Su-myeon found a sentence written along one side of a notebook filled with scribbled notes.

[A place where you never have to be sick again]

[Paradise]

Those words.

Su-myeon covered his face with both hands and rubbed around his eyes.

Ghost stories could bewitch even people outside them.

When Wendy had suddenly changed at the end and obediently retrieved this attendance register for them.

Su-myeon and Hwi-yeon had believed it was something that could later help them rescue survivors.

Instead, it had ended up serving the exact opposite purpose.

“Park Geon-su.... I think he may be Manager Park’s son.”

At Su-myeon’s words, those who knew the information about Geon-su covered their mouths in shock.

The photograph left inside the attendance register had been bait thrown to those who had lost someone and were still waiting for them.

Your precious person is at Mujin High School.

And there, they are healthy and young, never to be sick again.

With the attendance register whispering those words beside him.

What had Du-pal been thinking all this time?

“What time is it?”

“......Six.”

It was no longer dawn.

It was already morning.

Even if they went to Mujin High School now, there was no way to find the entrance into the Infinite School Grounds.

“Damn it. We’ll have to go to Mujin High School first thing tomorrow morning.”