Chapter 55

They had rescued no fewer than seven students, and every member of the expedition had returned safely.

They had also uncovered numerous rules of the Infinite Campus that had previously been unknown and confirmed just how variable the place could be.

The biggest concern had been Ian.

"What? Who stitched this up so neatly?"

Yet the wound had already been sutured so cleanly that even Young-cheol was surprised, and there was no danger to Ian's life.

His condition was poor, but thanks to Young-cheol's immediate first aid, there was nothing more to worry about.

Even the chunk of someone else's flesh transplanted into his abdomen had caused no serious complications.

For reasons no one could adequately explain, the two had fused together without any immune reaction, and the wound was steadily healing.

"Everyone, write down your home addresses first. I'll take you back one at a time."

The other students were allowed to return home after being given only a few basic precautions.

Aside from Ian, none of them showed any physical abnormalities, so there was little cause for concern.

The students themselves were unsettled by the reactions of those around them, none of whom seemed aware that they had ever disappeared, but Su-myeon thought that was probably for the best.

After all, when his own parents returned, they too would be able to slip back into reality without any trouble.

Watching the students return to their ordinary lives gave Su-myeon a measure of hope.

"This... is going to need some kind of explanation, isn't it...?"

Ian's sudden injury, however, required an excuse.

The wound was obviously unnatural, no matter how one looked at it, so they passed it off to his parents as the result of a "traffic accident."

Their story was that Ian had been jaywalking on a road without a crosswalk when he was struck by a police car, and his parents accepted it readily enough.

And when they were told that all medical expenses would be covered and that both sides would simply agree to let the matter disappear, there was little reason for them to refuse.

And so the students returned to their ordinary lives after a disappearance that no one remembered.

Ha-min had also found the friend he had been searching for, leaving him with no particular reason to keep coming and going from UTG.

"Still, if you ever need my help, make sure you call me!"

Ha-min said it earnestly, but Su-myeon could only hope that, if at all possible, such a day would never come.

And with that, the rescue operation at the Infinite Campus came to an end.

"Good work, everyone."

Exhausted after finishing their reports, they arranged a modest celebration with delivered food in one corner of the office.

Du-pal poured soju into Han-su's and Su-myeon's glasses.

Su-myeon found himself wanting a drink as well and drained his glass in one go.

The bitterness in his mouth remained.

"It ended pretty well. Why the long face?"

Du-pal spoke as though trying to console him.

This time, they had managed to rescue quite a few people from a ghost story.

There was no denying that they had succeeded.

And yet the people they had been forced to leave behind still weighed heavily on Su-myeon's mind.

Hundreds of students remained inside.

Hundreds who had already lost their minds.

'Can all of them be saved?'

He also found himself wondering just how much of a person had to remain "alive" for causality to recognize them as such.

It was impossible to know what condition someone had to be in within a ghost story for them to return to reality.

The physical injuries Ian and Hyeon-seok had suffered there had followed them back as real wounds.

Then what about someone who had changed so completely that they could no longer even be called human...?

What would happen if you dragged something like that back into reality.......

"And you got the rooftop key, too. You did everything you could."

Seeing Su-myeon still picking absently at the edge of a fried dumpling, his expression grave, Du-pal refilled his glass.

It was true.

Su-myeon had returned with the rooftop key.

If they entered the place again, perhaps next time they could grab only those who were in immediate danger and leave right away....

"Come on. Stop thinking and have a drink."

Du-pal tapped his own glass against the one he had just filled for Su-myeon.

Su-myeon gave a heavy nod and emptied his glass again.

Right.

It wasn't a problem he would solve by sitting here and thinking about it.

"By the way....."

Hwi-yeon's gaze wandered over the food covering the conference table before coming to rest on Han-su.

She had wondered whether they had ordered too much.

Apparently, they hadn't.

Su-myeon was only on his second glass of soju, yet Han-su had already polished off two bowls of jjajangmyeon.

Well accustomed to the sight, Su-myeon even handed over his own fried rice.

"Did someone starve you? Please defend your own portion."

"........"

At that, Ju-hee immediately pushed the entire plate of sweet-and-sour pork toward Su-myeon.

Hwi-yeon, apparently worried that anything left within Han-su's reach would disappear as well, slid the chili shrimp toward him too.

Su-myeon finally took a bite from the dumpling he had been picking at and smiled faintly at the sight.

He's a former protagonist. He's just a little unusual, that's all.

"Don't fight over food."

Su-myeon quietly pushed the dishes that had migrated toward him back to the center of the table.

Han-su simply ate a lot.

It wasn't as though he was greedy enough to steal other people's portions.

Then Hwi-yeon suddenly spoke.

"But you really are unusual."

"That's true."

Not that Hwi-yeon herself was any less unusual.

Su-myeon answered lightly as he finally began putting some food in his stomach.

Hwi-yeon and Ju-hee exchanged glances.

Wondering what that was about, Su-myeon looked from one to the other.

Ju-hee spoke first.

"No. Ms. Hwi-yeon meant that you're the unusual one, Mr. Su-myeon."

For once, Su-myeon found himself speechless.

He had spent his entire life being thoroughly unremarkable, never doing anything that attracted anyone's attention.

It was unfair enough that he had suddenly become entangled in something unnatural and ended up in this absurd situation.

"That doesn't sound much like a compliment....."

He said it half jokingly and half seriously, but Hwi-yeon shook her head.

She meant it in a good way.

"I think I'm beginning to understand why these extraordinary things keep happening to you, of all people."

Hwi-yeon had been deeply impressed by the way Su-myeon had conducted himself inside the ghost story.

Facing unnatural threats.

Keeping them under control.

As though he had been made specifically for the very purpose on which this organization had been founded, Su-myeon's responses had been almost flawless.

And that couldn't be explained merely by his prior knowledge of the safety rules.

The Infinite Campus they had experienced firsthand contained plenty of situations that fell outside those rules.

And yet how had Su-myeon responded?

He had neither frozen in pointless hesitation nor rushed recklessly into danger.

If it was Su-myeon, then perhaps....

'He might be able to save my younger sibling.'

Su-myeon, unaware of the hope behind Hwi-yeon's words, could only take them as an ambiguous remark whose status as a compliment remained questionable.

He kept being swept into things he had never once asked for.

Saving some people.

Leaving others behind.

And, ironically enough, everything he endured in the process only seemed to make his own reality more comfortable.

He had gone from unemployed to a civil servant practically overnight, complete with an entry-level salary comparable to what a respectable major corporation might pay.

'Because of the hazard pay, of course....'

Either way, Su-myeon was beginning to feel as though even his own reality was becoming strangely unreal.

He genuinely had no idea what he was supposed to do with all the money that kept appearing in his bank account....

"All right, that's enough work talk. Let's eat and actually go home early for once."

Noticing Su-myeon sinking into thought again, Du-pal waved a hand dismissively.

Come to think of it, a considerable amount of fatigue had accumulated.

Whether he managed to save anyone else or not, for now he wanted to eat, lie down, and sleep for a very long time.

"Yes. Everyone, please eat."

Besides, for some reason, everyone gathered here seemed unusually attentive to Su-myeon's mood.

Even Su-myeon, who had practically no social life to speak of, could tell how much they relied on him.

Meanwhile, Han-su had already finished another plate of fried rice and was finally beginning to slow down.

"Should we have ordered more palbochae?"

"No. It's fine."

"It's coming out of the activity budget anyway. Let's order more next time."

Ju-hee.

Han-su.

And now Hwi-yeon as well.

A combination of people he could never have imagined, somehow brought together into a single team.

Su-myeon watched them chatter with the strange sensation of observing NPCs talking in a game.

Of course, he now knew that they were real people.

He also understood that what he had once experienced as a game had actually been some kind of ghost-story phenomenon.

Even so, occasionally taking a step back and looking at reality from that detached perspective did a great deal to keep him mentally grounded.

"........"

Beside them, Du-pal tilted his soju glass, then let his gaze wander away.

A pile of reports sat nearby, only partially sorted.

'Infinite Campus.'

Entrants.

Survivors.

The lost.

Du-pal stared at the names listed beneath those plain headings and emptied his glass.

***

Several days passed.

UTG was the same as ever.

Su-myeon sat across from a man who looked painfully haggard.

"So... you're saying you can find missing people...?"

The person sitting opposite him was, in a sense, an informant.

More precisely, he was a relative of a missing person whose case Hwi-yeon had been following since before UTG even existed.

Hwi-yeon had judged the case to have the strongest connection to a ghost story, which was why she and Su-myeon were meeting him together.

"I can't promise you anything, but we're doing everything we can."

Su-myeon deliberately kept his answer cautious.

The man nodded as though that alone was enough.

"It doesn't matter. Just having someone listen to me without treating me like a madman is enough...."

He looked utterly exhausted, both physically and mentally.

Su-myeon could understand how he felt.

What if Su-myeon himself had had no one he could talk to about everything that was happening to him?

Sometimes, simply having someone take you seriously was a comfort in itself.

So Su-myeon quietly listened.

"My friend disappeared after saying he was going home to sleep. It's already been more than a year."

That was where his story began.

"Do you know where he lived?"

At Su-myeon's question, the man answered.

"Gihyang The Forest. It's a large apartment complex over in Seocho....."

The moment he heard the name, both Su-myeon and Hwi-yeon visibly stiffened.

And with good reason.

"......That's my building."

Su-myeon lived in that very same apartment complex.