Chapter 128: Tagger.apk (2)

[2. At each of the seven checkpoints, a different symbolic offering is made. Since this act grants causality to the ghost story, it is strongly recommended that it never be carried out. The act must be stopped as quickly as possible.]

As Jae-min walked down the alley, he checked the tagged location on the map on his phone.

“Uh, I think this is the place.”

The place where he stopped was an alley so old it was practically rotting away.

The entire way there had been shabby, but here there were faded signs for inns, the kind that were hard to even find these days.

Piles of garbage that looked like they were crawling with rats and cockroaches.

Streetlights spaced so far apart that they hardly seemed to serve any purpose.

Walls with all their paint peeling and crumbling away, and only a few Porter trucks and Damas vans, just as badly corroded and questionable as to whether they were even still in use, filled the alley.

[You have arrived at the first tagged location!]

[This is your first mission.]

[After pressing the Perform Mission button, shout your name loudly enough for your voice to be recorded!]

“Looks like the missions are fixed every day.”

That was kind of boring.

Doing the exact same mission for the third day in a row was a little disappointing.

Muttering such trivial complaints, Jae-min pressed the Perform Mission button.

“Song Jae-min!”

-Ding!

[Mission successful! Tagging the second location.]

A loading screen appeared along with a cheerful sound.

“.......”

Jae-min suddenly sensed someone nearby and looked behind him.

But perhaps it was only his imagination, because there was no one in the narrow alley.

It felt almost as though the entire neighborhood had been emptied out in preparation for redevelopment.

All the worn-down buildings beside him were dark as well.

Hot, humid air. The loud cries of cicadas somewhere in the distance.

And yet, despite all that, there was something strangely chilly about the alley.

“This place has one hell of an atmosphere.”

Saying that, Jae-min swept his camera around the alley and took a look around.

Then, all of a sudden, the chat began racing by.

-slkdf: Behind you!

-MintChocoCaptain: Behind you!

-HateBeingAlone: Behind you!

-wjtrfh: Behind you!

-Ppuyo: Behind you!

-Waseo: Behind you!

“Come on, quit messing with me.”

Jae-min answered playfully as though it did not bother him, but cold sweat broke out anyway.

A jumble of usernames, just like any ordinary chat, were all rapidly typing the exact same two words.

Behind you!

Behind you!

Behind you!

Behind you!

Behind you!

The chat was being flooded so completely with the same words that it almost made his eyes spin, and goosebumps rose on his skin for no reason.

Something felt strange. He even had the thought that something might be wrong, but.

'Did they catch on to what I did with the cat before?'

On the first day, he had deliberately pretended not to hear the cat's footsteps behind him and used them to play up the stream.

Jae-min forced away the frightening possibilities and grinned.

“Come on, when did you guys coordinate this? Seriously. You people are something else.”

At least the sun had not completely set yet, so it was still somewhat bright.

There was still a trace of daylight left in the sunset sky.

MintChocoCaptain: Next location still not up?

TpqTpq: God, stop shaking the camera already

HorrorManiac: Are you moving now?

And soon enough, the chat returned to normal.

Deciding it must have been nothing, Jae-min held up his phone, which had just finished loading, to the camera.

“All right, it finally came up, guys. Then let's head to the next location.”

***

If they could just stop that bastard Song Jae-min, one whole ghost story would close before it even had the chance to open.

Clinging to that single thought, Su-myeon sat crammed into the back seat of the car, his leg bouncing anxiously.

Of all things, they had run straight into rush hour, and the roads were completely jammed.

Han-su was driving, Ju-hee sat in the passenger seat, and in the back with Su-myeon was—

“Yaaawn.... Are we even going to get there today at this rate?”

Cheshire, yawning away.

They had actually meant to leave Cheshire behind, but he had insisted on coming because he could no longer stand being bored.

According to Jae-hak and Young-cheol, his injuries had already healed completely.

If they ended up needing to physically restrain Jae-min, Han-su and Cheshire together would be more than enough to overpower him perfectly without hurting him.

When the difference in strength was overwhelming, there was no need for anyone to get hurt in the first place. They could simply hold him still.

'At least I won't have to get involved myself.'

Let those two handle the physical part.

I'll just help catch him.

As Su-myeon anxiously stared at the gridlocked road with those thoughts running through his head,

Ju-hee, who had been watching Jae-min's stream from the front seat, suddenly spoke.

“Oh, oh! He's moving!”

At Ju-hee's words, Su-myeon stretched his upper body forward over the seat to look at her phone.

Jae-min was standing in some decrepit alley that looked ready to collapse, showing the map on his phone.

A large river flowing through—

“He's heading toward Hangang Park!”

***

For the first time in a while, Ha-min had no nighttime training scheduled today.

Since he finally had some free time, Ha-min had come with I-an to visit Geon-su in the hospital.

Now that he had a healthy heart, Geon-su was rapidly recovering both physically and mentally.

“Look at this. You're the one who stitched this up.”

“......Maybe I should've tried harder to make it look nicer.”

I-an abruptly pulled up his shirt right in front of Geon-su, and Geon-su answered with an awkward smile.

As it turned out, Geon-su was one year older than the other two.

But because he had taken time away from school as his illness worsened, he would have to repeat his third year in order to return.

In other words, by next year, the three of them might even end up attending the same school together.

Rather than bothering with who was older or younger, the three had agreed to simply treat one another like friends.

“This is plenty good enough. Though I guess the parts the doctors stitched up do look prettier....”

Ha-min let out a hollow laugh as he watched Geon-su and I-an talk like that about the large scar—one that most ordinary people would never have.

As far as teenage boys were concerned, if it healed properly, what better badge of honor could there be?

Wild and rugged men. The two of them seemed quite satisfied with scars that looked cooler than most tattoos.

“Once I'm completely healed, I want to see how much I can actually move around....”

“Yeah. The doctor said light exercise should be fine, didn't he?”

“...It's still hard to believe those words themselves. Walking normally has been difficult for me my entire life.”

Even while listening to Geon-su and I-an talk, Ha-min kept glancing around.

Cheshire, who usually tossed in some pointless comment every few minutes, was nowhere to be seen.

Instead, all he could see was Ryang, occupying an empty hospital bed and rolling around on top of the white blanket.

“Did the others go out into the field again? Did Mr. Cheshire go too this time?”

They had said they probably would not be moving around much for a while.

Geon-su answered Ha-min's question.

“From what I saw earlier, they found someone involved with a ghost story before he actually fell into it.... They went to stop him.”

When Geon-su explained that they had not actually entered a ghost story this time, Ha-min stuck out his lower lip.

Technically speaking, Ha-min was practically one of the original members.

Baseball had been his lifelong dream, but to be perfectly honest, Ha-min was starting to lose some interest in it.

Now that he knew this was a world where someone could disappear at any moment as though they had never existed—

How could he possibly keep living with the same state of mind he had back when he knew nothing?

“I'd be pretty useful too.”

It irritated him in more ways than one that they kept treating him like a kid and pushing him away from field work when there were only a few years between them.

Of course! It was true that he had been a little out of it during Alice Hotel at first.

“But isn't that how anyone would react the first time?”

How was someone supposed to stay calm when they were suddenly thrown into a world like that for the first time?

Someone like Su-myeon, who could immediately keep doing what needed to be done in a place like that, was the exceptional one. Ha-min's reaction had simply been normal.

And hadn't he done pretty well afterward at Mujin High School?

Geon-su smiled bitterly at Ha-min's grumbling.

Even Du-pal, who normally checked Geon-su's condition at least once every ten minutes, was too busy to come downstairs right now.

Apparently he was sending official requests for cooperation to various agencies....

“What can we do, though?”

“We still have to do what the adults tell us for now....”

I-an's resigned words, followed by Geon-su's impossibly well-behaved, model-student response.

Ha-min let both go in one ear and out the other, then suddenly looked at Ryang, who had been rolling around on the bed beside them.

She had rolled around so carelessly that all her hair ornaments had fallen out, leaving her single remaining horn completely exposed.

Of the two horns she should have had, one had been cleanly broken off amid her hair, leaving only the base clearly visible.

“What art thou staring at?”

As if she had noticed his gaze, Ryang narrowed her eye at Ha-min.

Ha-min hesitated for a moment before asking,

“Are you really a dokkaebi?”

Ryang looked several years younger than even the teenagers here, like a little sister.

But the way she spoke sounded older than an old grandmother.

“Would I be a false dokkaebi, then? What a foolish question.”

Even as she said that, Ryang was still rolling around on the bed like an unruly puppy.

Watching her, Geon-su said,

“Su-myeon asks Lady Ryang all sorts of things too. I guess she really does know a lot.”

Apparently hearing Geon-su's words, Ryang gave an exaggerated 'ahem' and sat up straighter.

Seeing that, Ha-min grew interested as well and approached her.

“......Will you answer if I ask you something too?”

“That may depend upon what thou askest.”

Ahem, ahem. Ryang answered primly, deliberately putting on airs.

The three teenagers exchanged glances.

More precisely, Ha-min and I-an's eyes were clearly filled with recklessness, so Geon-su quietly shook his head.

But no one could stop Ha-min once he decided to act.

“Then what should I do if I want Su-myeon to stop leaving me out of things and stop caring what I do?”

It was protection, not exclusion.

But that distinction rarely meant much to an eighteen-year-old boy.

At Ha-min's question, Ryang's single blue eye gleamed with interest.

“Dost thou truly wish for that?”

As though she had finally found an entertaining new toy after a long while, Ryang scooted right up to Ha-min.

“......Then I may deign to teach thee one method myself.”

***

Jae-min took the subway and before long arrived at Hangang Park.

He walked farther inward toward the tagged location, into a less populated area.

“Wow, the weather these days is seriously insane. I'd rather it just rain.”

Even though the sun had almost completely set over the river, the weather was still sweltering.

Along with the sloshing sound of the water came the distant cries of cicadas.

It had grown dark, but runners still passed by fairly often, so the atmosphere was not particularly gloomy.

“Well, this place is seriously boring.”

I'm going to lose viewers like this.

Focused entirely on that one concern, Jae-min checked the tagged map once again.

It should definitely be somewhere around here....

The moment he stepped into the shade beneath a bridge carrying an elevated roadway, his phone chimed.

[You have arrived at the second tagged location!]

[This is your second mission.]

[After pressing the Perform Mission button, take a selfie where your eyes can be seen clearly and up close! Click!]

“Anyway, let's just do the mission first.”

This mission was a photo.

It was also the same mission he had done yesterday, which made Jae-min feel a little uneasy.

At the instruction to take a selfie where his eyes were clearly visible, Jae-min jokingly shoved the camera grotesquely close to his face.

He even fired the flash, took a ridiculous picture, and immediately showed it to his viewers.

-cccccc: behind you

-O.o: behind you

-min4444444: look behind you

-eateateat: behind you

-hellokim3: it's behind you

-exit1004: behind you

-rdefyg: behind you

-endand: behind you!

A chill suddenly ran through Jae-min as he watched the messages continue pouring in.

“Ah, come on, that's not funny. Why are you all doing this, guys?”

With an awkward smile, Jae-min finally checked the photo he had taken and shown them.

What the hell was supposed to be behind him....

“...What is that?”