Chapter 116: CARE (2)

[#CARE]

That was Du-pal’s codename that appeared on the Heartphone.

If, as Su-myeon had reasoned, a codename was a word connected to its owner, things were beginning to fit together now.

What if the thing most important to him had been caring for his sick son?

“To think we never realized this until now....”

All they could do was repeatedly regret how little attention they had paid to Du-pal.

At Hwi-yeon’s murmur, Su-myeon let out a short sigh as well.

The only materials they could still check were scraps of notes or objects whose owner could no longer be identified.

But even among those, they could not find anything in the office that could properly be called evidence.

Du-pal had clearly tidied things up to some extent on purpose.

“......Ah!”

While searching the office, Su-myeon suddenly remembered something and headed for the storage room on the fifth floor.

Only a small number of people had authorization to access the storage room, but viewed in terms of the Governance as a whole, that was almost everyone.

The original members who had been with Su-myeon from the beginning, along with Hwi-yeon, were allowed inside.

It was something like the result of the trust they had built after going through this much life and death together and agreeing to cooperate for a greater cause.

But.

“...It’s not here?”

Ju-hee, who had come upstairs with Su-myeon, asked.

What the two of them were looking for was the rooftop key they had brought back from the Infinite School Grounds.

Which meant that Du-pal had also been thinking about escaping from the ghost story, didn’t it?

If possible, it seemed he had intended to bring Geon-su out with him.

And yet, the fact that he had kept it secret from the others and gone alone meant—

“He probably thought there was a greater chance he would stay there.”

All the Governance employees gathered together and began piecing together the possibilities one by one.

Immediately after leaving Alice Hotel.

Du-pal had remembered Geon-su, who had been bedridden and suffering from illness.

Back in the beginning, when everyone had gathered together with the desire to find the family members they had lost.

Watching Hyeon-seok, the first person they had managed to recover, Du-pal must have thought something like this.

‘He was frail to begin with. Is there really any chance he’s still alive after all this time?’

It was probably around then that Du-pal had gradually started losing his energy and becoming more withdrawn.

“We didn’t pay enough attention to him, so we can’t know for certain.”

Everything was still only speculation.

But the pieces fit together so perfectly that there was a good chance they were right.

“Then, in the middle of all that, he met Geon-su in the Infinite School Grounds, and on top of that, he learned that Geon-su was healthy there. Manager Park must have been conflicted.”

Su-myeon and the others had already failed to bring Geon-su back.

In fact, among all the people they had encountered whose sense of self still remained intact, Geon-su was the only one they had failed to rescue.

In that situation, Du-pal must have thought this.

‘Would it really be right to bring him back to reality only to make him sick again?’

The confines of illness might have been even narrower and smaller than a ghost story.

The fact that bringing him back meant locking him inside those confines again would certainly have made it difficult to act without hesitation.

And so he had continued hiding everything without saying a word.

But then.

His son’s photograph inside the attendance register.

A photograph that could exist only because it had been brought out of the ghost story.

Looking at it, he must eventually have become unable to endure how much he missed him.

“So in the end, if he couldn’t bring him back to reality, he decided he’d just live inside the ghost story with him? What kind of....”

Mi-ae, who had been quietly listening to the discussion, spoke.

Perhaps because she had completely forgotten Du-pal, her usual sharp way of speaking came out unchanged.

“Then, wait. Let’s organize this again.”

Su-myeon felt as though he could see a clue to solving this somewhere in the story.

“Either way, Manager Park did want to bring his son back to reality, which is why he took the rooftop key, right?”

Ju-hee answered Su-myeon.

“Right. Judging by the fact that he took the key. He was probably planning to try persuading Geon-su. But....”

“In the end, the illness is the problem. Right? Geon-su doesn’t want to come back to reality because of his illness.”

Su-myeon cut Ju-hee off and added that.

That was the single most important factor in the current situation.

Having clearly organized the situation in his mind, Su-myeon said,

“Then what if we cure that illness?”

***

In the end, after much consideration, they even managed to locate Du-pal’s home.

No one already knew where he lived, so Su-myeon had no choice but to ask Bok-eum whether he knew.

[Now thou art using me openly.]

All information relating to Du-pal had disappeared after he entered the ghost story.

The only thing that remained was the memories of people who could still remember the missing person because they had some connection to ghost stories.

And in a situation like that, the only person who would naturally remember the employees’ personal information was Bok-eum.

[Jongno District, Seoul....]

And, sure enough, Bok-eum remembered.

“......Does that mean this guy has all of our information memorized too?”

Until now, Du-pal had actually played the smallest role among them.

And yet Bok-eum even remembered his home address....

“......For now, let’s just be grateful.”

There was still something unsettling about Bok-eum that simply would not go away, but for the moment, they needed his help.

They went to the address he had given them, picked the lock, and entered.

A neat interior came into view.

But just like what Su-myeon had felt in his own home, the place was filled with a bizarre sense that something was wrong.

The walls were covered with strangely empty photographs showing nothing but scenery where someone clearly should have been standing.

Even the huge photograph in an old frame, which had probably once been an old wedding picture, was completely empty, leaving only the background behind.

“......Wait, then....”

Had Du-pal’s wife entered a ghost story too, not just his son?

Only Ju-hee and Kang Han-su had accompanied Su-myeon while searching Du-pal’s home without permission.

All of them had a certain degree of understanding of ghost stories.

So even without saying anything, they arrived at the same conclusion and felt a chill.

Watching the people of the Governance recover the precious people they had lost, one after another.

What in the world had Du-pal been feeling?

“For now... let’s look for anything that might give us a clue.”

With that, Su-myeon opened one of the closed doors.

It looked like the room of a male student, with a little dust accumulated over it and few signs that anyone had lived there recently.

He wondered if it might have been Geon-su’s room, but naturally, there was nothing that could identify its owner by name or identity.

Names had been violently crossed out with something.

Or had vanished entirely without leaving even a trace.

It was an artificial room from which the very presence of its owner had been erased.

“Did you see this?”

Feeling a little guilty, they searched even the desk drawers in what they assumed was Geon-su’s room and found an old prescription bag.

“...A prescription bag?”

Anything that could identify who the medication had been prescribed to had been erased.

But after they took several photographs and sent them to Young-cheol, he identified the medication for them.

They were also drugs that could only be obtained with a prescription.

[These are medications related to heart disease.]

That made it much more likely that the condition Geon-su had mentioned suffering from was related to his heart.

[At the very least, this isn’t the dosage a man of Manager Park’s build would be taking.]

For a growing boy, perhaps.

Judging by the fact that Young-cheol added that, he seemed to have arrived at the same conclusion as well.

It was now noon.

There was still a long time left before dawn.

So now, it seemed the key question was how they were going to cure Geon-su’s illness.......

“...There is one place we can ask.”

Su-myeon hurried back to the office.

***

The place he went straight to was the infirmary where the dokkaebi, who had regained consciousness at some point, was staying.

Ryang.

While Young-cheol examined the medication more closely.

Su-myeon piled a mountain of buckwheat jelly in front of the dokkaebi and asked,

“If a kid had an illness in reality, but we fixed it inside a ghost story before bringing him back out, he could be cured in reality too, right?”

There was a similar precedent.

It had happened in the Infinite School Grounds itself, when they had stitched Park I-an’s split-open abdomen together using a ‘Shadow Sewing Kit’ and ‘Shadow Flesh’ before bringing him back into reality.

On top of that, the Cyclops Contact Lens that had attached itself to Su-myeon inside a ghost story still worked perfectly well in reality.

Judging by those two cases.

Physical alterations to the body that occurred inside a ghost story physically carried over into reality.

At just the right time, Young-cheol also finished identifying the various medications Su-myeon had brought him.

“That’s right. These are heart medications. I’d guess he had some kind of congenital heart defect.”

Ryang, who had been rolling around on the bed hugging a fluffy pillow, listened to Su-myeon and Young-cheol’s conversation before sitting up.

“Aye, he can be cured. Thou hast one too, dost thou not? A heart.”

Su-myeon frowned slightly as he watched Ryang skillfully pick up pieces of buckwheat jelly with her chopsticks and eat them.

Well, of course he had a heart, didn’t he?

He was human.

But no matter what, he had no intention of giving Geon-su his own heart.

At Su-myeon’s incredulous stare, Ryang narrowed her eyes and stared right back.

“I want jajangmyeon too....”

From the other side of the infirmary, Cheshire suddenly yanked open the curtain around his bed and spoke.

At least when he had been a cat doll, he had been cute.

But at Bell’s castle, he had turned into an annoying old guy....

“......Ah!”

The thought that reflexively came to Su-myeon when he saw Cheshire led directly into another.

That heart he had bought from Bell back then.

[Tin Woodman’s Heart]

[A heart made of warm red silk. It possesses a heart of its own, yet becomes a heart that never tires.]

The item that had once felt unbelievably unsettling suddenly seemed perfect for this situation.

Seeing the realization dawn on Su-myeon’s face, Ryang shook her head from side to side.

“Tsk, tsk, tsk, tsk.... Thou lot truly hast no sense at all.”

Ryang, who had been stuffing buckwheat jelly into her mouth, set down her chopsticks and handed him a large pouch.

Su-myeon reflexively accepted the heavy pouch decorated with dancheong patterns, and the clinking sound of metal came from inside.

“Not one of thee knows how to properly keep hold of anything! Dropping something so precious all over the place!”

When he opened it, he found it packed full of the Rose Coins Su-myeon had failed to properly collect before leaving the previous ghost story.

He had been focused entirely on saving the people in front of him rather than picking up coins.

But hadn’t Ryang definitely been unconscious because of the anesthetic at the time?

He had no idea how she had managed to collect all of these....

“Oh, a real ghost really is different. That’s fascinating....”

“Impudent! Thou wretched cat!”

At Cheshire’s comment, Ryang immediately hurled a pillow at him.

The problem was that Cheshire knocked the flying pillow away, and it landed on Mu-yeon, who had been sleeping on a cushion beside him.

THUMP!

Hit by the lump of stuffing while he was dozing, Mu-yeon sprang upright and started barking.

Was this a goddamn infirmary or some kind of supernatural kindergarten?

“All right, I get it.”

Everyone calm down.

Su-myeon calmed the three of them and took a deep breath himself.

First, calm down.

It seemed they had found a way, so now he needed to think through everything carefully from the beginning.

“Cheshire, I’ll order you jajangmyeon, so keep a good eye on the kids.”

“Buy me more buckwheat jelly.”

“Woof!”

“....”

Exhausted by their respective demands, Su-myeon quietly turned his gaze away.

Jae-hak and Young-cheol, who had been watching from one side, gave awkward smiles and nodded.

“We’ll take care of things here, so you should go get some rest for now.”

“That’s right. If you’re planning to go there at dawn tomorrow, you really should get some sleep.”

Su-myeon nodded at their words.

It felt like his head would only start working properly again after he got a decent night’s sleep.

But before that, there was just one more thing.

There was someone he needed for a more reliable plan.

Su-myeon raised his phone and called a name he had not looked up in a long time.

[Im Ha-min]