Chapter 118: CARE (4)

And so, time passed again until it was 8 p.m.

The Unnatural Threat Governance was, as if it were only natural, stuck in an endless cycle of overtime.

At this point, it almost seemed like everyone might as well give up on going home and just live at the office.

“I’m going home. I can’t do this anymore....”

Mi-ae was exhausted in more ways than one.

She was tired, and the more they kept talking about someone she could not properly remember, the more stressed she became.

At least when Su-myeon entered ghost stories according to plan, it was not as bad.

Before she even had time to notice someone’s absence, evidence would already be scattered all around her.

The memos and notes Su-myeon had thoughtfully left in various places for Mi-ae were helpful.

But Du-pal’s disappearance was a little different.

No matter how much additional material the others gave her, it simply did not feel real.

What good was giving her the evidence only after he had already disappeared?

No matter how much she understood intellectually that he really had gone missing, it only made her more stressed.

“Okay. Mi-ae, go home early today and get some rest.”

Ju-hee said that as though she understood how Mi-ae felt.

Sometimes, at moments like this, Mi-ae wondered whether she should just go into a ghost story once herself.

“Right. There’ll be times when we need you rested and able to make a clear judgment, Mi-ae. Get some rest for now.”

At Hwi-yeon’s words, Mi-ae shrugged.

It was true that sometimes they needed the perspective of someone like Mi-ae, someone who knew nothing about what had happened.

Even with Du-pal’s disappearance this time, they would all have been confused if Mi-ae had not been there.

They would probably have had to leave open the possibility that he had simply deleted all the records and run away because he wanted nothing more to do with ghost stories.

“Oh! So this is the place where mortals do this thing called ‘work’!”

Just then, Ryang came in after leaving the infirmary, bustling around as she looked through the office.

Only after filling her stomach with the buckwheat jelly Su-myeon had given her had Ryang recovered enough to move around properly.

In truth, they had not managed to learn much about Ryang in the infirmary.

The reason was that advanced equipment such as CT and MRI scanners had all broken down at once when they tried to examine her, so they had been unable to attempt anything further.

The anesthetic did seem to have worked, but they could not even tell whether it had properly worn off.

Ryang simply wandered around perfectly fine, as though she had merely slept deeply for a certain amount of time and then woken up.

The only difference was that, after being told it would be better to hide her horn, she now wore a hat embroidered with traditional patterns pulled down over her head.

Thanks to Ryang disabling every machine around her, most of the survivors who had simply been anesthetized had all been transferred to a nearby military hospital.

“Goodbye.”

“Very well~”

Ryang shamelessly answered Mi-ae, who gave an awkward farewell before leaving work.

Hwi-yeon stared at the sight with an expression that seemed unsure whether she should laugh or say something, and Ryang spoke to her.

“Ah! A mortal downstairs asked me to pass along a message.”

Ryang readily relayed the message, apparently having no particular objections to being used like a carrier pigeon.

“Most of the patients transferred to other medical facilities have awakened safely as well, but I heard there are some people having problems because the blood vessels in their bodies were altered.”

They were the people who had had wires embedded in their bodies inside the ghost story.

Perhaps it was because they had simply cut the wires and brought them out, or perhaps things had already gone wrong by that point.

There was no way to know, but there was necrosis in certain extremities and various other problems.

Most of them had been left with permanent damage due to vascular issues.

Even so, considering that they had managed to survive, it was an enormous achievement.

Ryang watched Ju-hee, Hwi-yeon, and Ji-hoon show various reactions such as relief and worry at the message she had delivered.

Simply watching humans reveal so many different emotions in response to a few words was a kind of reward in itself for Ryang.

“Message delivered!”

Having cheerfully finished speaking, Ryang began poking around all over the office.

“Hmm....”

After wandering around and peering at everything, Ryang stopped in front of the coffee machine.

THUMP THUMP, when she smacked the side of the machine with her palm, the coffee machine actually began dispensing makgeolli.

As a liquid whose aroma made it absolutely impossible for it to be coffee began pouring out, Ju-hee was dumbfounded.

Could that thing... work like that too?

When Ju-hee stared at Ryang in confusion, Ryang misunderstood the look and said,

“Wouldst thou like a cup as well?”

Ryang looked ready to smack the machine one more time, and Ju-hee hurriedly stopped her.

“No! No. I wasn’t looking because I wanted some. I’ve just never seen that thing make anything other than coffee before.”

“Hmm, is that so? A little one must have been born, but it is so weak that it seems it was not even swept away.”

As Ryang saw it, this was a dokkaebi prank.

It did not have the ability to create a massive system like an AI the way she had, and for a young dokkaebi, taking up residence inside one small machine was probably the best it could manage.

“...You’re saying that’s a dokkaebi... prank?”

Hwi-yeon was also slightly surprised by Ryang’s words.

Everyone had always thought there was something suspicious about it.

“Indeed. Dost thou not know that dokkaebi are originally said to arise from objects? In the old days, brooms and millstones were popular. But what human useth such things these days?”

Even dokkaebi were giving birth to a new generation.

“...Then what were you at first, Ryang?”

The report had said that she had lived for a thousand years.

But there certainly had not been a system like AI a thousand years ago.

What had Ryang arisen from, to go on living for so long?

“’Tis a secret, you brat.”

Playfully sticking out her tongue, Ryang downed the paper cup full of makgeolli in one gulp.

She was liking this place more and more.

The spot where the abandoned data center had stood was empty now that the ghost story had disappeared.

But she did not particularly want to go back.

After all, everything interesting happening in the Republic of Korea these days was happening in Seoul.

“Put a piece of jelly atop this fellow too~”

Ryang said excitedly before leaving the office.

Should she go farther up, or farther down?

After thinking for a moment, Ryang ultimately headed underground.

She had been trapped inside a ghost story for a long time, losing both her physical form and much of her power.

As a result, she had become such a pathetic existence that she had to borrow the setting of an AI program and receive payment before she could even act.

But now, she had recovered nearly half of the power she had lost.

Part of that was because she had returned to reality.

“.......”

Ryang fiddled with the area around her left eye.

In truth, the power contained in this eye was the greatest of all.

She did feel a little as though she had conned some naïve fool, but it did not matter.

A dokkaebi was never a creature that possessed anything like a conscience in the first place.

“All is well that endeth well.”

As she descended into the basement, which should have felt gloomy, the energy of the earth only grew stronger.

Normally, underground spaces were shaded and filled with an unpleasant atmosphere.

But the earth energy here was so powerful that, despite being underground, there was a strangely warm feeling to the place.

How many people must the ghost story have lured in after taking root in a place like this?

Ryang found it infuriating, yet as someone who had now slipped into the vacancy it left behind, she could not help having another thought as well.

'Jackpot.'

Ahem, had that been a little too much like the way kids talked these days?

Feeling oddly pleased with herself, Ryang walked straight up to the locked iron basement door and pushed it open.

CREEEAK-

The door had been padlocked, yet it simply opened as though by magic.

A dokkaebi was, after all, a supernatural being.

An existence that transcended natural phenomena.

A being capable of performing wonders like some kind of person with supernatural powers.

If one were to compare them, their causality was greater than that of humans.

After all, spirits were beings capable of performing feats that even humans would perceive as miracles.

“Hmm....”

She had heard that the place had become horrific after the ghost story disappeared.

All kinds of odors had mixed together, and with the harsh smell of disinfectant added on top, the basement was filled with a nauseating stench.

After thinking for a moment, she slowly turned in a full circle and looked around.

Then, everywhere her feet touched, the ground began to cover itself with soil as soft as carpet.

It was as though an indoor garden had °• N 𝑜 v 𝑒 l i g h t •° been constructed underground.

Trees and all manner of lights appeared as though they had always existed there.

The basement, which had been utterly horrific, became a beautiful indoor garden that looked as though an enormous fortune had been spent constructing it.

“Perfect!”

And in the middle of that garden,

stood an old house Su-myeon had once seen in a dream.

Since it was yet another building inside the basement, it was closer to a thatched cottage with such a low ceiling that one had to bend at the waist to enter.

It was the house Ryang had once lived in.

Delighted, Ryang kicked off her shoes and practically rolled into the house.

“Hwaaa....”

A cozy thatched cottage on an exceptionally sunny patch of land, saturated with her own energy.

Ryang felt as though all the hardship she had endured in the data center had been completely washed away.

And since she had even taken this opportunity to relocate her territory to Seoul, for a dokkaebi, this was practically a rather successful move to the capital.

“......Come to think of it....”

There had been something Su-myeon said that even Ryang could not make sense of.

Had there been anyone among the humans who lived there who could have been Su-myeon’s grandfather?

She had thought about it, but no one came to mind.

Especially no one old enough to have a grandchild come visit.

The important part was.

“This house disappeared fifty years ago...?”

How had Su-myeon, who was only in his twenties, seen a house that had disappeared fifty years ago?

Ryang rolled around on the wooden floor, where she could feel the warm energy of the wood, and thought about it.

But even for a dokkaebi who possessed a thousand years of wisdom, something she had never personally experienced was—

“One of those things one understandeth yet understandeth not.”

Besides, there was no guarantee that being trapped inside a ghost story had not damaged her memories as well.

Ryang was assessing her own condition very objectively.

Su-myeon’s energy was somewhat unusual, but it was entirely possible that the one with the problem was not him, but her.

After all, she herself would never have been able to return to reality without that mortal’s help.

'If one were to judge the matter, ’tis more likely that fellow is normal than I am.'

As for the problems with her memories, she decided to work through them gradually.

“Hehehe....”

Ryang giggled childishly and decided to simply enjoy her return to reality.

This place was such a vast and powerful stretch of land that even while a ghost story had occupied it, it had still managed to give birth to a new dokkaebi.

In the past, she would never even have dared covet a place like this, assuming some far greater great shaman would already have settled here.

And now she had simply gobbled it up for herself.

Thinking about it again, she was immensely grateful to Su-myeon.

As the benefactor of a dokkaebi, he would live his entire life with wealth, glory, and power beyond anything he could ever want.

Because Ryang would make sure of it.

“......I do wish he would stop entering ghost stories now.”

The problem was that he kept entering ghost stories where even if she wanted to help him, she could not.

“If he dieth young, then so be it.”

It would be unfortunate, but what could she do about a human’s own will?

To Ryang, it was more regrettable that she could not immediately show off the space she had just created to Su-myeon, who was tense with an important task ahead of him.

“I shall show it off later.”

Looking around proudly, Ryang once again sprawled flat on her back across the wooden floor.

The basement was now filled with the fresh scent of soil and grass.

To her, a dokkaebi and a spirit, Su-myeon was a kind of restorer.

Someone who dug out and overturned the unnatural phenomena that had intruded into warped reality, packed down fresh sunlit earth in their place, and breathed life into it.

That was exactly what he was.

***

[1. At 3:00 a.m., if you make a wish on the third step of the third floor, your wish will come true. However, if you make an excessive wish, you will disappear from this world.]

The third step on the third floor.

The four of them stood side by side in that place they had returned to.

Su-myeon, Han-su, Young-cheol, and Ha-min.

Watching the clock, they all waited in silence for the appointed time.

“.......”

[AM 03:00]

And then, the exact moment they had been waiting for arrived.

Su-myeon closed his eyes and opened them again, only to find himself slightly flustered by a sight different from what he had expected.

“...What is this now?”