Chapter 139: Revisit (3)

[19. A special event for hotel guests! You can use the spa once for free, so don't miss out.]

The moment Kang Han-su saw the name Yoon Chang-sik, he recalled that rule again.

Yoon Chang-sik had been practically a mentor to him.

The senior who had guided him through life in Violent Crimes and become a standard by which he lived was this....

'A mass?'

Now even the behavior of the thing that had inexplicably fixated on him began to make sense.

What if, even after losing his memories, he had still been drawn toward someone he had known in reality?

Then everything actually fit.

"Let's head back down for now."

Su-myeon, who hadn't noticed Han-su's state, spoke to him, but Han-su's body moved before he could answer.

Han-su headed straight to the desk and immediately asked the spade employee.

"Does someone named Yoon Chang-sik still have any spa uses remaining?"

"Yes, he has one use remaining."

"Then... can you restore his body? Back to its original form...."

"Do you mean you would like full-body care?"

What was he suddenly talking about?

Su-myeon looked at him in surprise, and Han-su barely managed to calm himself before speaking.

"......The captain I was looking for."

It was an emotional expression Su-myeon had never seen on Han-su's face before.

His trembling hand showed Su-myeon the access pass he had pulled all the way out of the mass.

The mass obediently bent its upper body however Han-su pulled it.

Su-myeon had been bewildered by the sight too, but the instant he checked the access pass, he grabbed his head.

[Seoul Southern Police Station, Violent Crimes Team 1, Team Leader Yoon Chang-sik]

The police station Han-su had belonged to before joining the Governance.

And the person Han-su had been looking for was Captain Yoon.

A missing person with the surname Yoon, holding the position of team leader, right in front of them.

"A way, his body.... A way to restore his body...."

Hearing Han-su's trembling voice, Su-myeon quickly reached a conclusion for the moment.

Then he asked the spade again in clearer terms.

"Do you have any body parts belonging to a man named Yoon Chang-sik in storage?"

"No. We do not."

The answer was firm and concise.

It left them momentarily speechless, but Su-myeon asked again.

"...Is this person Yoon Chang-sik?"

"We cannot disclose a guest's personal information to anyone other than the guest himself."

It was so clear-cut it was irritating.

At the spade's words, Su-myeon and Han-su both looked back at the enormous mass.

The mass, which had been bent over obediently like a giant beast being held by a leash, reacted slowly.

"What is...... that...?"

"Could you come over here and ask whether your name is Yoon Chang-sik?"

Su-myeon moved aside from the space in front of the desk as he asked.

The mass very obediently moved itself forward.

While it did, Su-myeon asked Han-su.

"Was this what he was originally like?"

That man, Yoon Chang-sik?

At Su-myeon's question, Han-su shook his head with confused eyes.

In a situation where none of them understood what exactly was happening.

"Uh....... What...... is my name...?"

The mass seemed to have begun questioning something itself.

Instead of merely following Su-myeon's request, it asked a question of its own volition.

Once again, the spade answered calmly and succinctly.

"Yes, welcome, Mr. Yoon Chang-sik. Would you like to use our spa services?"

***

Ju-hee sighed as she tidied the empty overnight duty room at the Governance.

Three members of the field team had safely disappeared.

It was a strange way to put it, but that meant they had entered the ghost story normally.

As always, on days when a field team entered a ghost story, no one found it easy to go home.

Remaining in the office, anxiously waiting for those who had vanished to return, wasn't necessarily because there was a great deal of work they had to do.

Especially this time, since the group had departed from inside the Governance itself, there wasn't really anything that needed doing.

Even so, Ju-hee found it difficult to sit still and kept wandering pointlessly between the office and the overnight duty room.

"They'll be okay, right?"

Ji-hoon asked Ju-hee cautiously.

She had experienced Alice Hotel herself, and she still remembered vividly just how vast and brutal that place had been.

It wasn't something she could dismiss as simply having been frightened because it had been her first ghost story.

Even looking back on it now, Alice Hotel had been too enormous and strange a place for that.

"But."

Mi-ae, who had been going through the documents, suddenly spoke.

Once again, she had already forgotten the people who had entered the ghost story.

But the materials Su-myeon had left behind remained.

Mi-ae had been reading about the currently missing field team when she stopped and asked.

"This Chief Han Su-myeon... he is human, right?"

What kind of obvious question was that?

No, it went beyond obvious and actually sounded offensive to Ju-hee.

Su-myeon was who he was. How could anyone say something like that just because they had forgotten him!

Ju-hee's expression hardened enough to look rather frightening, but Mi-ae merely shrugged and replied without concern.

"No, but every record is way too weird. Haven't any of you noticed?"

Hwi-yeon had been about to tell her not to say pointless things, but stopped at Mi-ae's words.

The strange things about Su-myeon that everyone had tried not to think too hard about because of how much help they had received from him.

It was true there were quite a few.

"Chief Han knows things or can do things that most of us either don't know or can't do."

The list would go on forever.

Starting with his escape from Alice Hotel in the first place, and then every process of escaping the other ghost stories.

Su-myeon's unique qualities had always played the biggest role in all of them.

The Bell items they were now using so conveniently were the same.

Didn't she give them only to Su-myeon and trade only with Su-myeon?

"And why is it that only when people enter a ghost story as his ‘companions’ do they get Heartphones?"

Am I seriously the only one who finds that strange?

As Mi-ae continued, Ju-hee's expression gradually changed as well.

Everyone had simply accepted those things as normal.

But once they started examining them, there really were many peculiarities that applied only to Su-myeon.

Still, everyone including Ji-hoon only wore strange expressions.

When none of them could come up with anything to say, Mi-ae shrugged.

Based on the documents she had read, if she thought about it entirely from the perspective of an outsider.

"To me, the dokkaebi and this guy feel basically the same."

A being who simply knew things no one else knew, sensed them, and acted ahead of everyone else.

"......."

At Mi-ae's words, Hwi-yeon covered her mouth.

Now that she put it that way....

"That coffee machine is a dokkaebi too, right?"

A baby dokkaebi that somehow knew people's preferences in advance and arbitrarily dispensed something that person would like.

That was how Ryang had explained the coffee machine.

Then Mi-ae pointed upward.

There was only one unusual thing above them in the current situation.

Su-myeon's computer.

"Isn't it kind of similar?"

......Mi-ae's theory did have some logic to it.

And even Ryang, for all her unruly behavior, listened to Su-myeon better than anyone else.

She had also said that Ryang's body had been able to emerge into reality by receiving Su-myeon's eye....

'Could it really be true?'

Before they knew it, the four people gathered in the office were all wearing the same expression.

***

Meanwhile, inside the ghost story, Su-myeon and Han-su.

The two of them sat in front of the desk, deep in serious thought.

The mass—or rather, Chang-sik—was also sitting beside them with his enormous body curled up.

"What do we do?"

Su-myeon voiced the question aloud, but neither of them was currently capable of answering it.

Unexpectedly finding someone Han-su knew was, for the moment, good news.

After all, knowing something was always better than knowing nothing.

But in order to take Chang-sik out with them, two questions remained.

If they took him out like this, would Chang-sik be able to maintain his current form?

Mu-yeon, whose appearance at least resembled an animal that existed in reality, merely became somewhat weaker but was still capable of moving normally.

But what about Cheshire?

"......."

"Waa-ah."

Chang-sik, looking as though he didn't have a thought in his head, played with Mu-yeon's tail while making an innocent sound.

Slight regression to a childlike state, slowed speech, memory loss.

The more they saw symptoms identical to Cheshire's, the more difficult the situation became.

"Haa...."

Han-su couldn't suppress his agitation and let out a sigh.

Chang-sik's current form was far too large and grotesque.

What if, once he entered reality in this state, he simply became a puddle of rotten liquid like the other mutated corpses they had seen?

That was what worried them most.

It would almost be better if he simply became an object like Cheshire.

'...No, actually, that doesn't sound much better either.'

If he were at least small enough, they could put him in a pocket and carry him into another ghost story.

In every respect, this was difficult.

While they were still debating what to do.

Mu-yeon, who had been quietly wagging his tail in front of Chang-sik, suddenly shot to his feet.

Grrrr-

Seeing Mu-yeon abruptly lower his body and start growling, Su-myeon looked in the direction he was guarding against.

There, Gi San-hyeok was crawling out, having somehow attached all sorts of things beneath his neck.

"You... youyouyou... because of you... you......!"

Didn't he ever get tired of this...?

San-hyeok had apparently gone through considerable effort on his own, attaching spare parts to himself here and there, but he was moving at an extremely slow pace.

Su-myeon watched San-hyeok's efforts with slightly unfocused eyes.

He was already stressed enough after someone Han-su knew had suddenly appeared.

What in the world was wrong with that guy that he could be so overflowing with malice even now?

Looking at the pathetic sight, Su-myeon couldn't even be bothered dealing with him.

He tapped the desk with his fingers and called the spade employee.

"I think one of your supplies escaped."

At Su-myeon's words, the spade replied in the same clear, cheerful voice as ever.

"Yes. The security team will be arriving shortly, so please wait a moment."

When it apologized for the inconvenience, Su-myeon nodded and remained seated.

The sight of Gi San-hyeok painstakingly crawling toward them was truly miserable.

He had attached around five arms beneath his neck and was using those hands to clutch several legs, creating a grotesque shape.

If even San-hyeok in that form had been cooperative, Su-myeon might have considered finding suitable arms and legs and attaching them properly.

"I-I'll kill... I'll kill you... I'll kill......."

But when he was insisting so desperately that he wouldn't let them get away....

Thinking back on how San-hyeok himself had treated people as spare parts, this almost felt like karma.

Perhaps he really would have been better off simply dying when Han-su buried an axe in the back of his head.

"...Are you okay?"

In the meantime, Su-myeon asked as he looked at Han-su, who seemed half out of it.

He must have been deeply shocked, and Su-myeon could understand his feelings to some extent.

Thud! Thudthudthudthud!

At that moment, a vibration and noise with a strangely familiar quality reached them.

Only then did Su-myeon remember something.

"Ah."

Come to think of it, if it was the security team, wasn't security handled by the guards?

Thudthudthud!

Han-su seemed to realize the same thing and finally raised his head.

Far away, squeezing between the walls of the maze, a very familiar form appeared.

It was one of the clown guards they had encountered on the lower floor before.

Eyes bulging halfway out of their sockets as though they were about to fall free.

A mouth split all the way to its protruding cheekbones, packed with sharp teeth endlessly grinding like a crusher.

And.......

"......Damn it."

In one of its hands was the shoe Su-myeon had thrown away that day.

As Su-myeon hesitantly rose as though preparing to flee, Chang-sik spoke in a relaxed voice.

"Oh... it's okay....... We're... VIP guests......."

Meaning it wouldn't harm them?

Well, this was the spa, a place for guests, so perhaps under the rules there was no reason for the guard to turn hostile toward them.

But Su-myeon couldn't stop worrying about the fact that it was running toward them while holding his shoe.

"I'm pretty sure we dropped one of them on the floor below, didn't we?"

Han-su said cautiously, apparently remembering as well.

Just as he said, the two shoes should have been left on different floors.

The fact that the guard had found and collected both of them, and that it had specifically brought them here now, was not something Su-myeon found reassuring.