Chapter 153 The Ark of the Golden House (3)

3-2) Frost Giants

Drowned corpses trapped inside the freezer.

Their bodies have swollen to two or three times their original size, and they seize anyone who enters the freezer so that they will remain there with them.

They cannot move while exposed to light, but the lighting inside the freezer is unstable, so caution is required.

“......!”

Rachel shuddered violently at the sensation left in her hand.

She barely managed to hold back a scream, but the impossible feeling lingered in her palm.

The sensation of driving a blade into a human body bloated with water and frozen solid, then shattering it....

“Are you all right?”

In the meantime, Han-su had already taken down three Frost Giants with his hand axe.

“......Yes, yes.... I’m fine....”

“You don’t look fine. We should just hurry and....”

Su-myeon, who had been holding the door and guarding the entrance, suddenly stopped and turned his head.

He had been keeping his flashlight trained on the freezer so Han-su and Rachel would not be put in danger whenever the lights inside flickered, but now he carefully shifted the beam away.

Rachel, seeing Su-myeon tense for the first time since entering the ghost story, immediately became tense as well.

She was almost too afraid to ask what was wrong.

“...Take out the firearm you brought.”

At Su-myeon’s words, Rachel immediately drew the handgun at her waist as though she had been waiting for permission.

Su-myeon also reached for the rifle slung across his back.

“When you hear me start shooting, finish off whatever’s left inside and come out.”

Then we’re running.

While Su-myeon stared down the corridor, Han-su disposed of several more Frost Giants.

As the tension rose, the fear that had seemed to be consuming Rachel faded slightly.

She no longer had the luxury of being distracted by revulsion.

The instant Rachel turned her attention back toward the freezer, gunfire erupted behind her.

Bang—!

Bang, bang—!

Several shots rang out in rapid succession.

Rachel gritted her teeth, took precise aim at the heads of the monsters inside the freezer, and fired.

The water that had been sloshing around their shins had already risen to their knees.

“I’m done!”

“Get out, quickly!”

The gunshots reverberated through the narrow corridor.

Rachel tried to hurry out into the dark passage, but the knee-deep water resisted every step.

Su-myeon kept firing again and again, suppressing something approaching them, the shots so loud they hurt her ears.

But her body could not move as quickly as her urgency demanded.

The temperature had dropped enough to make her entire body shake, slowing her movements even further.

Su-myeon was holding the rifle with both hands now, so he had lowered his flashlight.

Rachel rushed out and aimed her own light down the corridor to help him shoot.

And then—

She found herself face-to-face with a monster that had already come right up to them.

Its crushed skin was a corpse-blue color, completely covered in clusters of barnacles.

Barnacles had even burrowed into its eyes, mangling them until the eyeballs were half hanging out, while the mass of barnacles growing inside its mouth had forced its jaw out of place.

“Aaaagh!”

This time, after seeing that face from only inches away, Rachel could not stop herself from screaming.

Han-su urgently grabbed her by the back of her collar and yanked her away while Su-myeon immediately began firing in bursts.

Su-myeon seemed to shout some kind of curse as well, startled despite himself, but the gunfire drowned it out.

The Barnacle Man staggered backward as several bullets struck its face.

3-3) Barnacle Man

A mysterious entity that wanders unpredictably throughout the entire cruise ship.

It walks while dragging its feet, its entire body covered in barnacles, but despite appearances, it moves with astonishing speed.

It has a docile disposition and does not directly cause harm.

However, physical contact will cause identical barnacles to begin growing from the affected area, so eliminating it before contact is recommended whenever possible.

Too many things were happening at once.

Rachel fell backward as Han-su pulled her, the resistance of the knee-deep water dragging her straight down.

Han-su buried his hand axe in the Barnacle Man’s neck while Su-myeon held it back.

The Barnacle Man reached toward Han-su.

Su-myeon stopped firing and swung the rifle into its arm.

Even as she went sprawling onto the floor, Rachel managed not to lose the flashlight she had been using to illuminate the target for Su-myeon.

Then she raised her handgun again.

'Damn it....'

Determined to make up for how pathetic she had just looked, Rachel carefully took aim again.

The Barnacle Man was already grotesque enough, but its head had now been reduced to a mangled mess.

Several bullet holes had been punched through it, leaving the creature staggering and unable to advance.

Rachel aimed at the same spot and fired again.

At last, the bullet broke through the hardened barnacles and reached its brain.

The Barnacle Man flailed its arms wildly from the impact.

Only after Rachel fired one final shot did it finally collapse into the water.

“Haa... haa.......”

Only then did Rachel drag in ragged breaths and rise from the ice-cold water.

As she stood, she reflexively looked down.

Seeing the mass of hair swaying beneath the surface made her flinch again.

Still, perhaps because she had just seen something far more horrifying, she managed not to scream this time.

“What were you doing?! What if that thing had touched you?!”

The instant the situation was under control, Su-myeon shouted at Han-su.

Rachel felt embarrassed seeing Su-myeon scold Han-su instead of her, even though she had been the one too startled to respond properly.

But Su-myeon had his reasons.

How could anyone respond perfectly to something they were experiencing for the first time?

For a newcomer, Rachel had actually been fairly useful right up until the end.

The fact that she had managed not to drop the flashlight and had kept illuminating their side was enough to say she had done her part.

But what if Han-su had gotten grabbed by the Barnacle Man because of that?

“......I did it because I thought you were in danger. I admit I was too hasty. Sorry.”

Once Han-su quietly admitted it, Su-myeon had nothing more to say.

Su-myeon let out a sigh, then looked toward Rachel, who was standing awkwardly nearby.

“You’re not hurt, are you? It didn’t touch you anywhere?”

“......No. I’m sorry. I panicked too much....”

“It’s fine. Everyone just needs to be more careful with themselves. That seriously scared the hell out of me.”

Su-myeon wiped the water splashed across his glasses and looked around again.

There were no monsters left.

All of them floated limply on the surface.

By now, the water had risen halfway up their thighs.

And perhaps because causality equal to the dead entities had disappeared, the golden decorations covering the surroundings now looked noticeably cheaper.

That alone meant clearing out the area had been worth doing.

Su-myeon briefly scanned the surroundings, but conditions were too poor to search for the Rose Coins that were presumably scattered nearby.

Any coins submerged beneath the water would be hidden by the strands of hair swaying like seaweed.

And even if he found one, what he picked up thinking it was a Rose Coin might actually be one of the fake gold coins the cruise ship used as bait.

“Let’s move.”

Su-myeon immediately abandoned the idea and took the lead.

***

Time did not always flow at the same rate between ghost stories and reality.

By the following day, a subtle tension had begun to settle over the Governance office.

Ju-hee, too, was starting to notice something strange about Kurosaki and was becoming uncomfortable around him.

There was nothing wrong with his attitude of trying to learn whatever he could.

In fact, Rachel had seemed even more aggressive about digging for additional information.

After all, knowledge about ghost stories was not knowledge meant for personal gain.

That premise made his behavior difficult to criticize.

But....

'Why does he look so suspicious...?'

Kurosaki’s questions were becoming increasingly peculiar.

“So, objects from inside ghost stories have no effect at all in reality? You said organs or body parts transplanted into someone inside a ghost story still function after returning to reality, didn’t you?”

“Is it actually possible to deliberately lure someone into a ghost story and make them fall inside?”

“To what extent can actions taken inside affect reality?”

At first, Ju-hee had answered his questions sincerely.

Eventually, though, she began asking him why he wanted to know those things in the first place.

Those did not sound like questions meant to help people.

'...I don’t know.'

She could not quite put her finger on it, but something was strange.

A subtle female instinct picked up on an unsettling current telling her that something was wrong.

Ju-hee discreetly sent Du-pal a message.

[Manager Manager, I think Mr. Kurosaki has some other agenda.]

[Manager Park Du-pal: ?? What agenda?]

[How should I know.]

[Can you keep him occupied outside during lunch?]

[Manager Park Du-pal: Yeah, got it.]

After quickly arranging things with Du-pal, Ju-hee subtly exchanged glances with Hwi-yeon.

She had already heard from Hwi-yeon and Mi-ae the day before that Kurosaki seemed suspicious.

“Then should we all go eat lunch and continue afterward?”

Ju-hee checked the time, saw that lunch was approaching, and stood up.

“Oh, right. Yeah. Mr. Kurosaki, have you ever tried ganjang gejang?”

“...What is that... soy sauce... crab? What is it?”

“You’ve never tried something that amazing? Then why don’t we go eat that today?”

Du-pal spoke in his usual booming voice.

Caught up in the moment, Ji-hoon nodded in agreement.

“Oh, sure. Sounds good.”

But Mi-ae immediately made a disgusted face, as though she had been waiting for the suggestion.

“Ugh, no thanks. Your mouth smells like soy sauce and fish all day afterward.”

“I’m on a diet, so food with that much sodium is a little....”

“The three of us will just grab salads. You three go enjoy something good.”

As the group naturally split into two, Kurosaki obediently followed Du-pal and Ji-hoon out.

Could everything simply be a misunderstanding?

Maybe.

But that was no reason to be careless.

After all, he was an outsider from another country whose true intentions they did not know.

He might try to take information that could put them at a disadvantage for the sake of his own country’s interests.

The clearest examples that came to Ju-hee’s mind were Mu-yeon and Ryang.

Nothing good would happen if their existence became publicly known.

There was no way ordinary people in reality would accept them easily.

While Du-pal and Ji-hoon kept Kurosaki occupied, the three female employees skipped lunch and immediately gathered at a café in front of the office.

“He really is strange, isn’t he?”

All three of them shared the same concern.

Disappearances caused by ghost stories could ultimately become national issues.

What if Japan extracted evidence that could place Korea at a disadvantage and then tried to make use of their personnel however they pleased?

“That’s probably the worst-case scenario we can think of, but....”

“But isn’t it true? If you really think about it... it is. What if they just keep sending Su-myeon into ghost stories and have him hand out Heartphones to all their agents? That alone would be valuable, wouldn’t it?”

Ju-hee spoke somewhat heatedly, but Hwi-yeon could not deny it.

Even Mi-ae, who knew who Su-myeon was only from objective records, agreed with Ju-hee.

“I think so too. It actually sounds entirely possible. Look at it this way. The moment the Chief comes out of the ghost story, isn’t he going to set foot directly on Japanese soil?”

Without a passport.

Without any record of entering or leaving the country.

The operation had been arranged through an agreement between the two nations, but looked at another way, if someone broke that agreement, Su-myeon’s position could become dangerously ambiguous.

“And besides, we were originally only discussing cooperation with the Americans. Japan suddenly joined in halfway through, remember? Of course, we agreed because we thought their involvement would be useful, but....”

Mi-ae’s assessment was based purely on how the situation looked from a third party’s perspective.

“It’s strange.”

Hearing that even Mi-ae thought Japan’s approach and Kurosaki’s behavior were suspicious made Ju-hee and Hwi-yeon’s expressions grow even more serious.