Chapter 145: Branch Point (3)

How did they know?

Su-myeon couldn’t help being taken aback by Ju-hee’s words. She had noticed that Alice Hotel had been concluded before she had even noticed their return.

But then Su-myeon looked at his phone as it immediately began ringing.

Above Sa-rin’s missed calls, Director Jang Bok-eum’s name was flashing on the screen.

Even in the middle of that, courtesy-call messages kept appearing, informing him that Sa-rin was still trying to reach him.

“.......”

With an ominous feeling, Su-myeon answered the call.

“...Yes, Director.”

He heard Jang Bok-eum sigh when he heard Su-myeon’s voice.

-You could at least have told us to prepare in advance.

Su-myeon didn’t immediately understand what he meant, and when he failed to answer, Jang Bok-eum continued.

-With Alice Hotel concluded, reports are flooding in simultaneously from countless locations all across the country.

At those words, Su-myeon shot to his feet.

He had thought they would only make a few floors unusable.

Maybe it was because they had dragged the master of the ghost story into reality.

Maybe the explosions had been far more powerful than expected.

Whatever the reason, it seemed that all the missing people, just like them, had appeared exactly where they had originally fallen asleep.

-This one... we can’t contain.

The chaos across the country. The countless problems.

To be frank, those weren’t the kinds of things Su-myeon handled.

Wasn’t that why the man currently sitting above him in the chain of command was there in the first place?

“Good luck with that. I’m hanging up for now.”

As though possessed by something, Su-myeon got out of bed.

Now he understood the strange concern in Ju-hee’s gaze as well.

It was certainly a good thing that they had safely concluded the ghost story and returned unharmed, but now something had happened that made the aftermath impossible to contain.

“Where are you...? Where are both of you going!”

Su-myeon wasn’t the only one who abruptly stood up.

Han-su also rose immediately, looking like he had suddenly remembered something he urgently needed to check.

“I need to find someone.”

Han-su answered quickly and left the duty room first.

Watching his back as he disappeared, Su-myeon hesitated for a moment.

Inside the hotel, the Red Queen had definitely told him that his parents weren’t there.

But only now, as he found himself unconsciously heading home, did Su-myeon realize something.

He had never completely believed her.

What if they had been transformed into something whose identity had been erased beyond recognition?

That possibility had remained somewhere in the back of his mind.

He hesitated briefly, then headed straight for his house.

For some reason, the road home felt especially long today.

“.......”

Su-myeon entered the dark house and turned on the living-room light with a trembling hand.

Click-

“.......”

He confirmed that, just as before, the photos in the living room still showed only him.

And only after checking the still-empty master bedroom did he collapse where he stood.

They might still be alive inside some other ghost story.

That hope, impossible to abandon, pushed Su-myeon forward yet again.

What ghost story was he supposed to search next?

Wasn’t it already too late by now?

Maybe it would actually be easier if he could at least confirm that they were dead.

Ugly thoughts like that kept surfacing and only made his head hurt more.

How many more times would he have to repeat this before he found some trace of his parents?

But for today, he had already reached his limit.

His body felt so heavy that he couldn’t even make himself stand again.

He simply tossed his jacket aside, lay down in a corner of the living room, and picked up his phone.

[I’m going to rest today, so if anything comes up, Team Leader Lee should communicate directly with the Director.]

After what he had just gone through inside the ghost story, Su-myeon had earned that much.

***

In the end, Su-myeon came down with a severe case of the flu.

Unlike Su-myeon, who barely managed to drag himself into work while groaning in discomfort.

“......Team Leader Kang says he can’t come in today.”

Su-myeon relayed the news about Han-su in his place.

Even Su-myeon was a little afraid to ask exactly what had happened.

Captain Yoon.

What kind of form had that man returned to reality in?

“......Chief, why don’t you just go home and rest?”

Mi-ae spoke with visible discomfort as she watched Su-myeon chew the ice from his iced coffee, his face flushed red with fever.

But Su-myeon couldn’t possibly rest quietly either.

He felt too uneasy, and he desperately wanted to know what was happening now.

It truly was a world where even lying down and sleeping comfortably was difficult.

“Just summarize the situation for me.”

I’m dying here.

Even while grumbling, perhaps because of the fever, Su-myeon kept craving cold drinks.

Young-cheol watched him repeatedly gulp down iced coffee until he finally couldn’t stand it anymore and snatched the drink away.

“No, I went through the trouble of giving you an injection and medicine, and you’re sitting here drinking this?”

“It feels like it helps. No, anyway, someone just give me a summary already.”

As Su-myeon urged them on, Ju-hee handed him a different drink and spoke.

“Drink this instead. And right now, there’s nothing the Governance can do. Mujin High School was about the largest scale we could actually handle ourselves.”

The drink Ju-hee had handed him was lukewarm barley tea.

Su-myeon frowned and set the paper cup down before asking again.

Thousands of people had suddenly appeared all across the country in the places where they had originally fallen asleep.

For some, it was still the home where their families lived.

Others appeared inside someone else’s house because the original residents had already moved away.

The problem was that ninety percent of them were corpses.

Most were bodies in advanced stages of decay or severe damage.

Su-myeon, who had checked the online reaction on his phone that morning, asked,

“The internet’s going crazy too. Is the government going to issue another statement?”

For now, they had only covered the situation with the vague claim that they were investigating.

Thanks to that, the commotion was only growing worse.

“That’s....”

When Su-myeon looked at the hesitant Hwi-yeon, she continued.

“It looks like this might turn into an international issue.”

......What does that mean?

Even after stuffing himself with all kinds of cold medicine and painkillers, Su-myeon’s head was still foggy. He pressed a hand to his forehead and narrowed his eyes at Hwi-yeon.

Hwi-yeon finally seemed unable to tolerate it anymore. She walked over, supported Su-myeon, and pulled him to his feet.

“Ghost stories aren’t only a problem in our country. Honestly, that would be ridiculous, wouldn’t it?”

“Ah, why.... No....... Wait. So?”

Su-myeon found himself being pulled upright by Hwi-yeon and asked again.

“I’m taking you home. Come on. I’ll explain on the way.”

As they were leaving, Su-myeon encountered Ryang standing motionless outside the office.

They exchanged nothing more than a slight nod, but Ryang stared after Su-myeon as he left the Governance.

***

Hwi-yeon carefully set out some porridge and the medicine Young-cheol had prescribed where Su-myeon could easily reach them.

“Nothing has been finalized yet, but this issue will probably be discussed together with the United States.”

Hwi-yeon continued explaining why this had turned into an international incident.

“Do you remember the cruise ship ghost story?”

Well, of course you wouldn’t forget it, Chief.

Adding that herself, Hwi-yeon continued.

“We’ve been trying to establish contact because investigating that case would require cooperation from the American side.”

As she had mentioned before.

The unnatural decline in population was a phenomenon government agencies around the world had already identified.

“It sounds like, until now, their greatest success has been rescuing small numbers of survivors.”

Compared to that, the results achieved under Su-myeon had been enormous.

They had completely concluded a ghost story and solved the problem on such a massive scale that the consequences had spread across the entire country.

Because of that, other countries were apparently contacting Korea, asking for cooperation however they could.

Nearby countries like Japan and China had approached them, as had various European nations.

But the first cooperation currently being discussed was with the United States, which Hwi-yeon had already attempted to contact before.

“In other words: this incident wasn’t the beginning of chaos, but the achievement of excellent Korean government agents who ended that chaos. And the United States will work together with Korea to resolve the next incident.”

Korea would somehow use that framing to calm public opinion.

And the United States would obtain Korea’s cooperation.

Apparently, the most likely conclusion at the moment was that both sides would take something from the arrangement.

“Sounds like I’m the only one who gets nothing.”

But Su-myeon found the entire discussion absurd.

Calling it the ability of Korean agents was almost meaningless.

Wasn’t this an achievement that none of them could have accomplished without Su-myeon?

And Su-myeon’s own objective was to get his parents back.

He couldn’t see what international cooperation had to do with that.

“Well, that’s true. That’s why they settled on the cruise ship, but....”

Hwi-yeon trailed off.

At the moment, they had absolutely no clear clue where or how Su-myeon’s parents had disappeared.

“Is there no possibility that something happened to them while they were traveling?”

Travel.

Travel, huh.

Maybe it was possible.

Perhaps they had secretly gone on a trip together without telling their unemployed bum of a son.

“......I can’t be certain of anything.”

At Su-myeon’s answer, Hwi-yeon nodded as well.

In truth, Hwi-yeon only knew exactly where her younger brother had been trapped because they had been swept into the same incident and she alone had returned.

Most people had no idea about the exact circumstances of their loved ones’ disappearance.

Far more people were searching blindly for the missing.

Apparently, her own situation had actually been comparatively fortunate.

As Su-myeon watched the bitterness settle over Hwi-yeon’s expression, he suddenly asked,

“After your brother disappeared, how much of his face could you remember?”

Hwi-yeon answered with a bitter smile.

“......I forgot it incredibly quickly. Honestly, even now I still can’t remember it exactly. You’ve seen him. My brother is still....”

A wolf monster.

There was no other way to describe his current form.

Remembering someone’s face accurately without even a single photograph.

None of them had ever imagined how difficult that could be until they experienced it themselves.

Su-myeon was starting to feel tired too.

How long could he keep repeating this?

That thought simply kept circling through his head.

“Haa....”

His head felt like it was splitting open.

“Get some rest.”

Within a day or two, the commotion outside would somehow be dealt with.

The chaos would linger for a long time, but that wasn’t Su-myeon’s responsibility to manage.

And then again.

We’ll go searching for someone inside another ghost story.

That was what they had to do.

***

Kang Han-su crouched in front of the funeral hall and lit the end of a cigarette.

It was already his third, but it still wasn’t doing much for him.

He filled his lungs with the acrid smoke and exhaled, but the pressure in his chest remained.

“.......”

The funeral Han-su had come to was Yoon Chang-sik’s.

His family only remembered the existence of the head of their household they had forgotten after losing him.

But right now, the entirety of South Korea felt like one massive house of mourning, so even a funeral hall with this many visitors was rare.

Things had reached the point where nearly two families had to hold funerals in the same room.

The entire country seemed to have come to a standstill under an unprecedented disaster more terrifying than an epidemic.

“.......”

Yoon Chang-sik had appeared only as black liquid.

In the police station duty room, just like Han-su.

Because of that, the colleague who had been on duty that day had found Captain Yoon’s... liquid....

“.......”

There was barely anything that could be recovered as a body.

They had to cremate the blanket used to wipe up what had once been him, along with his access pass, in place of his remains.

Unable even to cry, Han-su recalled the last time he had seen him inside Alice Hotel.

By then, he had already been almost dead.

Whether it had been his soul or something else, only one tiny fragment that could still be called human must have remained, barely holding him together.

The colleagues who had forgotten him were now deeply confused by his sudden death and by the gap his absence had left behind.

And in a disaster like this, there wasn’t much even the police could do.

The best they could do was mourn.

“Did you... know something?”

A veteran detective with a face swollen from crying approached Han-su and asked.