Chapter 147: Joint Investigation (1)

Once lunchtime had passed and the appointed time arrived, the Japanese agent was the first to appear.

He was a man in a sharply tailored suit, not particularly tall, with a typically Japanese appearance.

“Hello. My name is Kei Kurosaki, an agent with Japan’s Disaster Countermeasures Headquarters.”

Su-myeon shook hands with the agent, who politely extended his hand while speaking fluent Korean.

Hmm.

“I’m Han Su-myeon from Korea’s Unnatural Threat Governance.”

It was a greeting he still wasn’t used to.

As soon as Kurosaki entered, the dokkaebi prepared a cup of coffee tailored to his tastes....

‘......?’

Can’t it read a foreigner’s mind?

The coffee machine, which had been sitting quietly, brewed another cup suited to Su-myeon’s own tastes when he approached and peered at it.

Just as he reluctantly handed that cup to Kurosaki, the American agent arrived as well.

“Wow, traffic in Seoul really is terrible. I’m not late yet, am I?”

The American agent who said that spoke Korean at an almost native level, with astonishingly accurate pronunciation.

If it weren’t for her blond hair and blue eyes, Su-myeon might not have realized she was a foreigner just from hearing her voice.

“I’m Rachel Crow, an agent with the U.S. BUTR. Nice to meet you.”

Then she smiled brightly and added,

“We just call it ‘Butter’ among ourselves. Not exactly stylish, is it?”

At Rachel’s words, Mi-ae and Ju-hee muttered at the same time.

“Still better than ours.”

“Way better than ours....”

Su-myeon quietly agreed in his head.

After that, they exchanged a few minor introductions, and Hwi-yeon smoothly handled the basic explanations.

The next time Su-myeon spoke was when they finally began discussing the cruise ship ghost story in earnest.

It’s in the water. It was in the water.

A being worthy of reverence.

Its veins filled with gold and jade beat with

the eternal, immortal truth.

You must bow your head.

You must show Him proper respect.

The sublime one sunk beneath the seabed

inthewaterinthewaterinthewateritisitwasitisthere

inthewaterinthewaterinthewater....

For now, the agents from the two countries who were seated in the conference room were handed a single post.

Tae-hyeon, Ji-hoon’s friend who had once been trapped in The Witch’s Forest.

It was that very post left on his blog.

Hwi-yeon had to tell them the long, long story behind the source of the post, but.

The story of Ji-hoon and Tae-hyeon’s friendship left the two agents deeply moved rather than bored.

They kept casting wistful glances through the glass toward Ji-hoon outside the conference room as they spoke.

“So, in any case, he spent several years inside a ghost story and still escaped safely. And now he works to rescue other people?”

Rachel, whose Korean was more fluent, openly expressed what she was feeling.

Apparently, she found his decision admirable.

Kurosaki nodded vigorously as though he agreed one hundred percent, then asked,

“Then, the person who wrote this post. Does he remember what happened in the cruise ship ghost story?”

His Korean was somewhat awkward, but still perfectly understandable.

“For now, he no longer remembers what happened back then.”

He could probably remember if they forced him to.

Su-myeon shook his head.

“There was a possibility the psychological changes from the ghost story might resurface, so we deliberately chose not to try.”

Even though Su-myeon’s answer effectively meant there was no further evidence, the two agents looked astonished.

“For one thing, it’s amazing that you’re even capable of conducting investigations this systematically.”

“That’s right. Psychological changes. We don’t have any standard for distinguishing things like that.”

Su-myeon frowned as he listened to Rachel and Kei.

Korea hadn’t even had an agency responsible for ghost stories to begin with, so the Governance had been hastily established after Su-myeon was suddenly dropped into the position of Chief.

He had assumed countries that already had agencies related to ghost stories would be different.

“What do you mean by a standard? Most of the time, if someone’s a ghost-story survivor... can’t you get a general sense just by talking to them?”

“Well....”

Kurosaki and Rachel seemed to exchange glances for a moment.

Rachel shrugged and said,

“We don’t have any history of personally bringing survivors out. At best, we’ve been trying to form teams out of agents who are survivors themselves and somehow make it work.... That’s about the stage we’re at.”

Once Rachel said that first, Kurosaki answered as well.

“We are in a similar situation.”

At those words, Hwi-yeon and Su-myeon looked at each other.

This is more serious than we thought...?

But considering that before Su-myeon appeared, Korea hadn’t even been able to clearly confirm what was happening.

It was understandable.

For now, Su-myeon nodded and barely managed to move on to the next question.

“All right. I understand roughly where you both stand now. And both of you have experience escaping a ghost story on your own, correct?”

The agents from both countries nodded.

Su-myeon continued.

“For now, I don’t know how well either of you understands this system, and we also can’t be sure that ghost stories don’t operate differently from country to country.”

Su-myeon briefly wondered whether he should choose his words more carefully, but simply added bluntly,

“Tell me about the ghost stories you entered.”

For some people, it could be a traumatic subject.

But if they had decided they were willing to enter another ghost story in order to rescue someone.

Then they would at least need to be capable of facing their own trauma if they were going to work together.

“I’ll go first.”

Kurosaki was the first to speak.

“This happened about a year after I joined the Disaster Countermeasures Headquarters.”

He explained that the ghost-story-related division within Japan’s Disaster Countermeasures Headquarters still wasn’t entirely made up of people with firsthand experience inside ghost stories.

“All we did was periodically search areas where strange reports kept recurring or where survivors had appeared and provided testimony, in order to prevent further casualties.”

***

Five years ago.

An old village somewhere in Japan.

Kurosaki was searching a forest path with his colleague Sota after the third mysterious disappearance report had already been filed there.

On top of that, there had also been an incident where some lunatic had appeared and caused an uproar in the village, claiming that oni were eating people.

Hoo- Hoo-

The strange cry of a bird.

Even in broad daylight, the forest was so dense that it carried a dark atmosphere.

It was still winter, making the woods even colder.

Kurosaki found himself regretting slightly that he hadn’t worn thicker clothes.

“Do you think an oni really did appear?”

“If that were the case, wouldn’t they have gone looking for a temple? Besides, didn’t they say there’s an old shrine at the end of this mountain path?”

Kurosaki replied indifferently to Sota.

People often told him he was unusually fearless.

It wasn’t something to brag about, but even he considered himself to have a fairly bold personality.

That was probably why he was capable of doing this kind of work in the first place.

Compared to him, Sota was somewhat overflowing with a sense of justice, kindhearted but rather timid.

His personality was much closer to that of an ordinary person.

“You never know. It’s not like shrine maidens these days actually have divine power very often.”

They’re basically just service workers.

Kurosaki privately thought Sota sounded childish saying things like that.

He had never believed in occult nonsense like oni, shrines, or divine power in the first place.

He was only humoring Sota by responding on his level, and he felt neither interest nor fear.

From the beginning, he had assumed there had to be some scientific explanation behind the disappearances.

“......The compass can’t find a direction.”

Watching the compass he had brought spin wildly, Kurosaki gave it another few shakes.

Wasn’t there a common story like that?

That some deep forests in Japan possessed unusual magnetic fields.

People said those forces interfered with the human brain, compasses, and scientific equipment, creating ghostlike hallucinations.

Hoo- Hoo-

The bizarre birdcall rang out again.

Adding something like that into the equation, it wouldn’t be strange for frightened, weak-nerved people to start hallucinating here.

Kurosaki became convinced this place was that sort of area.

‘If I assume the worst....’

A serial killer taking advantage of it.

Or someone who had been driven insane after being overly affected by that magnetic field.

The possibility of something like that was about the most frightening thing Kurosaki could imagine.

Just as he was thinking he needed to keep his head clear, he suddenly heard the sound of drums.

“...?”

Kurosaki stopped in the middle of the forest.

Sota, who had been walking with an uneasy expression, turned back toward him in confusion.

At some point, the sun seemed to have begun setting, and their surroundings had grown darker.

Noticing that, Sota switched on his flashlight and shone it at Kurosaki.

“What is it, Mr. Kurosaki?”

A chilling wind blew through hundreds, thousands of branches, filling the forest with rustling noise.

Their hair fluttered in the wind.

Boom- Boom-

“...Just now. Didn’t you hear that sound?”

Hearing the drums again amid it all, Kurosaki frowned at the blinding beam of the flashlight.

Seeing that, Sota lowered the flashlight slightly so that it illuminated the path between them and tilted his head.

Boom- Boom-

Hoo- Hoo-

Right then, the sound of drums rang out again.

And then came another sound they couldn’t identify.

Only then did the two of them realize.

The noise they had been hearing all this time wasn’t the unusual cry of a bird.

It was the strange tone of some kind of wind instrument being played.

Along with it, several other difficult-to-identify sounds were chaotically mixed together.

They were even getting closer little by little.

“Did anyone say there was some village festival or something today?”

“N-No.... I didn’t hear anything like that...?”

Sota answered hesitantly, his fear obvious at a glance.

Why would there be sounds like that in a forest like this, beside an old village mostly inhabited by elderly people?

Kurosaki felt that they needed to find out.

“It sounds like it’s coming from behind us. Should we wait for a bit?”

This forest path led from the village toward an old shrine deep in the mountains.

It wouldn’t have been completely strange for there to be some kind of procession related to a festival or village tradition.

At Kurosaki’s words, Sota shook his head, his face pale.

“...No, something feels wrong. Mr. Kurosaki. Wouldn’t it be better if we went to the shrine and waited there instead?”

Their phones hadn’t been getting any signal for a while, probably because they were deep in the mountains.

Sota might be right that even if they intended to investigate, it would be better to do it from the shrine where they could restore communications.

Kurosaki nodded and started walking down the forest path again.

As expected in winter, the days were short, and the dense forest made it worse.

They had definitely started their patrol sometime after lunch, walking around the village and then through the forest....

“It’s only four o’clock...?”

Even if there was no signal, the clock should still be accurate, shouldn’t it?

Just as Kurosaki began to feel that something was strange.

Boom- Boom-

Hoo- Hoo-

Along with those sounds came something resembling the murmur of a large crowd.

The path wasn’t especially winding, so Kurosaki raised his own flashlight and tried to shine it in that direction.

But Sota abruptly switched off his own flashlight, grabbed Kurosaki, and pulled him into the undergrowth beside the path.

Why all of a sudden?

Startled, Kurosaki awkwardly hid himself behind bare trees that had lost all their leaves for the winter.

If anyone deliberately turned their head and looked, there was no way they wouldn’t be found.

Sota seemed to realize that as well, because he was trembling violently.

“I-I saw it.... I saw itIsawitIsawitIsawitIsawitIsawitIsawit.”

As Sota began muttering, chills ran over Kurosaki’s skin as well.

Only then did he realize that something was wrong.

Sota desperately asked again,

“How far is it to the shrine?”

But Kurosaki didn’t answer the question.

No, he couldn’t.

Right behind the colleague who had asked from directly beside him.

Hoo- Hoo-

With his lips pursed.

A man whose face had gone deathly white, with wildly grown horns tearing through his skin and jutting out everywhere.

Hoo- Hoo-

Was pressed right up behind his colleague’s head, making that grotesque sound.