Chapter 27: Sadang Station Exit 4 (3)

[3. Flutesoundflutesoundflutesound]

Author: Anonymous

I can't get any farther away.

What's chasing me?

Whose footsteps are these?

I should have turned back

I should have turned back

I need to turn back

I can't turn back

***

Their minds already made up, Su-myeon and Han-su pressed forward without stopping.

Perhaps this, too, could be called a kind of bewitchment.

But at least one thing was certain.

Neither Su-myeon nor Han-su could hear the flute anymore.

That meant they had at least managed to avoid the most dangerous element of this place.

The Heartphone continued displaying ominous warnings, almost as though it were demanding that they turn back immediately, but Su-myeon was certain of one thing.

He hadn't gone too far yet.

He could still turn back.

Han-su followed Su-myeon's decision as though doing so were the most natural thing in the world.

"......"

Su-myeon decided to stop second-guessing his own judgment.

To his bare right eye, there was nothing there but the smooth tiled wall of an ordinary subway corridor.

But through the eye fitted with the Cyclops Contact Lens, he could see a passage concealed behind hanging strands of blood vessels.

Carefully, he reached a hand toward the wall.

His fingers slipped straight through to the other side.

"It's like...... a train platform to some magic school."

Of course, unlike something out of a fantasy, there was nothing romantic about this.

Only the revolting sensation of something brushing against his skin.

Han-su didn't seem to understand Su-myeon's muttered comparison, but he followed him through the tiled wall.

After the irrational experience of passing straight through solid matter, the two found themselves on a new path.

The corridor was made of the same tiles and ceiling panels as the endlessly repeating passage around Exit 4.

There was only one difference.

Visibility was unnaturally limited.

They could see only a few meters ahead before the corridor disappeared into impenetrable darkness.

"Are you sure it's safe to keep going?"

Su-myeon nodded at Han-su's question and cautiously moved forward.

Through the truth revealed by the Cyclops Contact Lens, he could see enormous blood vessels pulsing behind the tiled walls.

For now, however, their rhythm was slow and steady.

Almost as though they were asleep.

"Let's move carefully."

Wary of disturbing them, the two continued deeper into the darkness.

Before long, they caught sight of the man who had disappeared ahead of them.

He was still walking slowly with that strange, awkward gait, so it didn't take long for them to catch up.

But he wasn't the only thing waiting ahead.

"......"

Su-myeon instinctively clapped a hand over his mouth.

The passage the man had led them into opened onto a vast thoroughfare, where countless branching corridors spread like the limbs of a tree before converging into one.

And through that enormous passageway flowed a massive crowd of people, all moving in the same direction.

Dozens—

perhaps hundreds—

of footsteps echoed through the corridor in an eerily synchronized rhythm.

Their movements resembled a procession of toy soldiers.

But unlike the disciplined march of real soldiers, their steps were lifeless and unnaturally stiff, their arms and legs bending and straightening like joints on hinges.

An impossible number of people walked like that.

Every last one of them moving in the same direction.

"Wait...!"

Su-myeon barely had time to process the sight before the swelling crowd filled the space behind him and Han-su as well.

Glossy skin.

Eyes that seemed crafted to imitate human ones.

They looked like dolls made disturbingly lifelike.

Dozens upon dozens of human forms devoid of life simply continued onward.

'I'm going to lose him!'

Su-myeon grabbed Han-su and hurried after Hyeon-seok.

Then, suddenly, a thought struck him.

If that man really was someone from the real world who had become lost and trapped here—

"All these people—don't tell me every single one of them......"

Someone's precious person.

People who had vanished from reality without leaving behind a single trace.

Goosebumps raced across Su-myeon's scalp.

Footstep after footstep rang out from bodies that possessed not even the faintest hint of living vitality.

The endless succession of sounds merged into a grotesquely warped rhythm, like a broken gramophone caught repeating the same fragment forever.

Were all of these really real people who had lost themselves after being bewitched by some unknown phenomenon?

FWEE.

Just then, the flute that had seemed to disappear sounded once more.

The instant it did, every person in the crowd quickened their pace at exactly the same moment, as though responding to a subway arrival chime.

Su-myeon was nearly swept away with them.

He fought to keep his balance, forcing his way through the crowd as he broke into a run.

Han-su stayed close behind, supporting him whenever he stumbled, and Su-myeon finally managed to grab hold of the man ahead.

'Executive Director Shin Hyeon-seok.'

Su-myeon snatched the employee ID hanging from the man's neck.

He regretted not asking Ju-hee for the missing man's name beforehand, but at least the title matched.

Executive Director.

Could he hold onto him?

Could they take him back with them?

The moment the thought crossed Su-myeon's mind—

GRAB.

The man seized Su-myeon's hand.

The very hand clutching his employee ID.

Then—

his neck bent at an impossible angle.

An expressionless face, as blank as a mannequin's, moved closer until it was only inches from Su-myeon's own.

"......,"

"......"

Eyes with a strange waxen sheen stared at Su-myeon without blinking.

In the suffocating silence, Su-myeon swallowed hard as he met the man's gaze from point-blank range.

For a moment, he thought their eyes had met.

But something was wrong.

Like the eyes of a doll with no focal point, the man seemed to be staring directly at Su-myeon while somehow looking through him at the same time.

Still, one thing mattered.

His marionette-like steps had stopped.

"Can you...... speak?"

The instant Su-myeon asked the question, something seemed to crack and ripple deep within the man's pupils.

A pupillary response.

A flicker of life that hadn't been there a moment earlier.

"AAAAAAGH!"

Before Su-myeon could even feel hope, a scream erupted somewhere in the distance.

Every person packed into the corridor snapped their heads toward the sound at once.

The stranger—

no, Shin Hyeon-seok—

did the same.

The spark of life that had flickered in his eyes vanished instantly.

Once again, everyone moved in perfect unison.

Like identical dolls.

"No! No! Stop! Help me!"

Someone was screaming.

A desperate wail that went on and on.

As the cries continued, every person who had turned toward the sound suddenly moved at once.

They charged toward it like hounds that had spotted prey.

Hyeon-seok went with them.

Han-su and Su-myeon both tried to hold him back, but all they managed to do was tear part of his jacket.

Hyeon-seok shook them off with unbelievable strength.

In the end, the only thing left in Su-myeon's hand was the employee ID that could prove who he was.

"Let go of me! Let me out! Let me—!"

Then the scream stopped.

A crushing sense of futility washed over Su-myeon.

They had come all this way, only to lose Hyeon-seok again.

But there was no time to dwell on it.

Han-su tried to pursue him once more, but this time Su-myeon grabbed him and held him back.

"We can't. It's too dangerous."

The crowd that had numbered only dozens before had now grown into the hundreds.

And the subway-like corridor around them had begun transforming into something bizarre.

Without either of them noticing when it happened, the walls had become covered in garish, colorful decorations reminiscent of an old, run-down amusement park.

FWEE— FWEE.

The sound of the flute grew louder and louder.

Su-myeon couldn't bring himself to ignore the post that had appeared on the Heartphone.

If the flute and the countless footsteps were beginning to merge together, then going any deeper would almost certainly become dangerous.

They had to turn back while they still could.

"Going any farther will put us in danger too."

And that wasn't all.

Through his left eye, Su-myeon could see the blood vessels beyond the walls.

They were no longer simply pulsing.

They were writhing.

They looked as though they might burst through the surrounding tiles at any moment and devour whatever happened to be nearby.

Going any farther wouldn't be a gamble anymore.

It would be suicide.

Han-su looked as though he wanted to seize anyone within reach and drag them back with him, but Su-myeon refused to release his arm.

"You saw what just happened. We can't cause a commotion and draw attention to ourselves. We have to go back quietly."

If Han-su had been alone, perhaps he would have accepted the risk.

But he wasn't alone now.

Any reckless decision he made could put Su-myeon in danger as well.

Han-su wasn't reckless enough to ignore that.

Reluctantly, he nodded.

Still, their trip hadn't been entirely fruitless.

Su-myeon held up Executive Director Shin Hyeon-seok's employee ID.

"For now, let's at least take this back and confirm what we can."

They needed to determine whether the countless people gathered here really were humans who had disappeared from the real world.

Confirming that fact alone would be meaningful enough.

The two pushed aside their tangled emotions and quietly retraced their steps against the flow of the crowd.

Corridors branched off in every direction, each of them disgorging more people, making it almost impossible to tell which way they'd come.

But they managed.

With the lens over his left eye, Su-myeon could distinguish the correct path.

***

In front of Sadang Station, Exit 4.

Everyone who knew Su-myeon, Ju-hee included, sat slumped outside the grimy subway entrance in despair.

"Damn it...."

"What the hell are we supposed to do...."

Had Su-myeon and Han-su vanished like the others?

Would they, too, fade into forgotten existences that no one else remembered?

If Su-myeon was gone now, what could the rest of them possibly do?

One bleak thought followed another, each darker than the last—

"We're outside...!"

A familiar voice rang out.

That utterly ordinary voice they had been so desperately waiting to hear.

Everyone who had been crouching there in despair turned around at once.

There stood Su-myeon and Han-su.

Both looked exhausted as they emerged from Exit 4 and drew deep breaths of the open air.

"Su-myeon!"

"Su-myeon hyung!"

Everyone sprang to their feet, shouting their names in relief.

Su-myeon and Han-su, suddenly confronted by the entire group, looked more startled than anyone.

"What? Why's everyone here?"

"It's...... four in the morning, you know?"

At their confused reaction, Ha-min burst into tears all over again.

"We all thought you two had disappeared!"

At the very least, they were safe.

Arms and legs intact.

Minds intact.

Seeing that, everyone finally released the breath they'd been holding.

Young-cheol was the first to regain his composure.

After he explained why they were all gathered there, Su-myeon stared at them in disbelief.

Were these people fearless?

Or were they simply reckless?

"What if you'd actually gotten dragged into that world?! Why would all of you do something this crazy?!"

"Is that really what matters right now?!"

Du-pal shouted back and smacked Su-myeon hard on the back.

Ju-hee, her eyes nearly overflowing with tears, nodded emphatically.

"Everyone was worried about you. Let's just be grateful it all worked out. For all of us."

No one else had been caught up in the urban legend.

And the two who had were back safely.

Watching Ju-hee express her gratitude for that alone, Su-myeon reached into his jacket pocket.

"There's something I need you to check, though."

He hesitated briefly, unsure how to bring it up.

In the end, he decided it would be easier simply to show her.

"We ran into someone in there."

Shinseong Group.

Executive Director Shin Hyeon-seok.

The relief on Ju-hee's face vanished in an instant.

It was an ordinary employee ID card bearing the photograph of a neat, clean-cut man.

Ju-hee's hand began to tremble faintly as she took it from Su-myeon.

"You...... met this person......?"

Her voice shook even more than her hand.

She repeated the word "met" several times under her breath.

Then she suddenly lunged toward Su-myeon with enough force to seize him by the collar.

"Where?! Where was he?! Was he in some weird place like that hotel?! Somewhere like that?!"

Ju-hee had always been bold and headstrong.

Right now, however, she was almost aggressive.

Han-su had to grab her and pull her back.

But to Su-myeon, her reaction was already an answer in itself.

And for an entirely different reason, his heart sank.

"That person......"

Before Su-myeon could even ask her to confirm it, Ju-hee cried out urgently.

"That's right! He's the one I've been looking for!"

His worst suspicion had just been confirmed.

And faced with that certainty, Su-myeon could neither rejoice nor grieve.