Chapter 57

[Do not handle the items in the fifth-floor storeroom carelessly. Every item here is the property of the Unnatural Threat Governance, and unauthorized access may result in unforeseeable consequences.]

The storeroom was plastered here and there with ominous warning notices, yet Su-myeon alone moved freely among them.

Dragging a chair along with him, he stopped in front of the computer where Cheshire lay sprawled.

"By the way, don't you get bored lying around like that all day?"

Cheshire, who was stuffing potato chips into a mouth whose anatomy Su-myeon had no particular desire to understand, nodded.

"Mm."

At the one-word answer and simple nod, Su-myeon searched for a game and launched it.

[UTG: The Witch's Forest]

An apartment complex towering amid dense trees.

A sprawling complex—something one might aptly call a forest of apartment buildings—rose among the trees on a strange title screen painted in gloomy shades of dark green.

The first thing to appear when the game began was a text-heavy script screen.

Title: something's been bugging the hell out of me lately

so lately I've been walking down the stairs for exercise

don't feel like actually going to a gym so I figured I'd at least walk down the stairs

I live in an apartment, ninth floor

anyway I use the emergency stairwell

aren't fire doors in emergency stairwells legally supposed to stay closed?

but weirdly the fourth-floor one is open every single day and I keep running into the guy from unit 404

thought it was a coincidence the first few times but more than five times in a row is kinda weird right?

and my building is 404 too. no idea how many times the number 4 is stacking up here

it's freaking me out for no reason

Comments: 3

└ isn't exercise supposed to be walking UP the stairs?

└ OP: oh shit really?

└ dumbaXX lmaooooooo

The first post was perfectly ordinary.

But before long, the viewpoint shifted to that of the person who had written it.

Having realized he'd been an idiot, the poster decided that from now on he would just take the elevator downstairs instead of using the stairs.

And so he stood waiting for the elevator, his eyes repeatedly drifting toward the emergency stairwell that had been bothering him for no real reason.

'Will the fourth-floor door be open again today?'

As though responding to that very thought, the elevator stopped on the fourth floor and refused to move.

Enough time passed for the motion-sensor lights in the common area to switch off and back on several times.

Yet the elevator remained stuck on the fourth floor.

Eventually, overcome by an unsettling mixture of curiosity and impatience, the poster headed for the emergency stairwell.

Through the stairwell window, he could see a bright sky and the apartment building across the way.

There was nothing ominous or gloomy about the atmosphere, so he descended without hesitation.

Tap. Tap.

The sound of footsteps echoed down the stairwell.

The section between the fifth and fourth floors.

Only that stretch was dark, as though a shadow had settled over it.

When he glanced toward the stairwell window, he saw that a tall tree had grown up high enough to block it.

Rustle—

Leaves and branches scraped against the glass.

It made him slightly uneasy, but there was nothing particularly strange about it.

The poster slowly descended toward the fourth flo—

CRASH!

"...!"

Even though he had played the game before and knew exactly what was coming, Su-myeon still recoiled from the keyboard.

The fourth-floor fire door in the game had slammed shut with a deafening crash.

Su-myeon lowered the speaker volume slightly and resumed controlling the character.

CREEEEAK—

Just as the character started down toward the third floor, the rusty groan of hinges came from behind him.

He turned around.

Through the narrow gap in the fourth-floor fire door, a pair of eyes stared at him from the darkness.

The character, apparently seized by fear, clattered hurriedly down the stairs.

The moment he reached the first floor, the screen faded to black and another long block of text appeared.

Title: I'm the guy who posted about that 4th floor fire door a few days ago

holy sXXX I nearly pissed myself today

it was still bugging me so I walked down the stairs again

except today while I'm going down he slams the door shut hard as hell

seriously it was loud enough to make even someone with no fear jump

then he cracks the door open and just glares at me

his eyes were huge as hell and something about the way he looked at me was so wrong, like he was high or something

it's like he's deliberately trying to fuck with people?

is this guy just insane?

it's gotten to the point where knowing someone like that lives in my building creeps me out

Comments: 12

└ he's insane probably

└ you see him every time? if it's that often isn't he doing something in the stairwell?

└ this. was there anything on the stairs?

└ go check the stairs go go

└ OP: if I ran into him at dawn I'd seriously piss myself. gonna check tomorrow

└ read yesterday's post. but how do you know he's from 404?

└ yeah how

└ OP: saw him go into that unit once when the fire door was propped open

└ does it happen when you go up too? or have you just never tried going up?

└ OP: honestly that's what creeps me out more. it only happens when I'm going down

└ ooh

└ make sure you report back if you find anything on the stairs

When the game resumed, the poster's character was once again standing on the ninth floor of the emergency stairwell.

Su-myeon shut the game down there and printed out the relevant material.

Annoyingly enough, no matter what he tried, the original data itself could not be shared with anyone else.

It looked perfectly normal to him.

No one else could see it.

By now, he was beginning to get used to that particular quirk.

"All done~?"

"Yes. I'm going downstairs for a bit."

"Mm. Bring me chocolate when you come back."

Leaving the cat doll to its leisurely existence, Su-myeon headed down to the office.

Alongside the familiar team members, there was one woman he had never seen before.

"Ah, Mr. Su-myeon. You're here?"

Ju-hee naturally made room for him, and Hwi-yeon introduced the unfamiliar woman.

"This is Agent Yoon Mi-ae. She was the intelligence officer on my team back when I worked in the field."

"Yes, sir. I've heard a great deal about you. Agent Yoon, Agent Mi-ae, Mi-ae—whatever's easiest for you."

Ah.

Come to think of it, Su-myeon remembered Hwi-yeon mentioning that she intended to gradually fill the gaps in their staffing.

That sort of thing was Hwi-yeon's responsibility anyway, so Su-myeon hadn't paid much attention to it.

He nodded and shook Mi-ae's hand.

"Yes. Good to meet you. I'm Han Su-myeon."

"Yes, sir. Special Assignment Section Chief Han Su-myeon. I look forward to working with you!"

Her manner was so eager to please that it bordered on flattery, which made Su-myeon slightly uncomfortable.

No matter how young an agent might be, becoming an NIS agent wasn't exactly something one did overnight.

And Mi-ae was quite obviously older than he was.

Still, that hardly mattered right now, so Su-myeon got straight to the point.

"I've narrowed down which ghost story the missing person is most likely trapped in. There's something we need to verify."

Su-myeon placed the pages he had printed from the game's script on the table.

"Could you first check whether any posts like these have appeared online?"

Mi-ae took the documents without hesitation.

With an easy smile, she flexed her fingers lightly and began searching.

"Then I'll run a quick search. You can consider it my introduction while I'm at it."

True to her background as an intelligence officer, it didn't take her long to find what they were looking for.

By the time Su-myeon returned from getting himself a cup of coffee from the machine—

"This. This is it, right?"

Mi-ae had already found the site.

The post had appeared on an online community, and it had even more comments than the version Su-myeon had seen in the game.

Judging by the sheer number of replies, everyone seemed to be hoping something would actually happen to the poster.

"Hm. These were posted pretty recently. The first one went up last week. The latest was yesterday."

The latest post Mi-ae had found was the installment immediately following the one Su-myeon had seen in the game.

Title: I checked the stairs by the 4th floor fire door

not gonna lie I'm actually scared now

I can't even go home, I'm at a pc cafe right now

if you bastards hadn't told me to check the stairs I never would've known

or maybe not knowing would've been worse?

honestly I don't even know anymore

what does this look like to you guys?

The poster, whose writing now seemed noticeably more unstable, had attached a single photograph.

The image showed a disgusting reddish-brown lump.

At a glance, fragments resembling eyes, a nose, and a mouth could be made out in it, like some horribly mangled lump of cookie dough.

That only made it more revolting.

It looked eerily like a human head that had burst apart.

Comments: 15

└ what the hell is that

└ what is it what is it was that on the stairs?

└ isn't that just a fucked-up batch of cookies

└ eat it

└ explain what happened

└ OP: that thing was on the stairs and when I touched it that lunatic suddenly came screaming after me

└ he chased you?

└ eatiteatiteatiteatiteatiteatiteatiteatiteatiteatit

└ and what the hell is wrong with this guy?

└ ?????????????????

└ that is seriously suspicious though. isn't it like drugs or something?

└ probably fake

└ OP: I wish it was. seriously how am I supposed to go home now

└ if it bothers you that much just report it

└ report what? cops these days won't even take something like that seriously

"Hmm~ This certainly has all the makings of a ghost story. But where did you get the original material?"

Mi-ae asked casually after skimming through the posts, but the expressions of those who had actually experienced ghost stories were grim.

Ju-hee, in particular, had already gone through nearly all the material Su-myeon had given her beforehand.

"This is that one, isn't it? The one you gave us called The Witch's Forest."

"Probably. I think so too. Though the situation seems a little different, since this person says he's the one living in unit 404."

Su-myeon carefully reviewed what they knew.

First of all, the posts could still be found through an ordinary internet search.

More importantly, Mi-ae—who had never entered a ghost story and who, by Su-myeon's standards, was still an 'ordinary person'—had been able to find them too.

Which meant—

"For now, it looks like this person hasn't entered the ghost story yet."

Mi-ae gave him a questioning look.

Han-su explained.

"Once someone enters a ghost story and disappears, all records of that person vanish."

That was why the sheer number of people lost to ghost stories had never become a major public issue.

Once they vanished, they disappeared from everything.

Digital records.

Physical documents.

Official paperwork.

Even people's memories.

While Hwi-yeon and Han-su gave Mi-ae a brief explanation, Su-myeon sank deeper into thought.

As was often the case with ghost stories, there was no reason to assume they could be entered from only one specific place.

The Infinite Campus was the same.

Mujin High had simply been the easiest point of entry.

There had been other ways in.

He had once assumed that the basement of this building was the only entrance to Baekya Land, only to later discover another route connected to the Sadang Station Exit 4 ghost story.

If that was the case, The Witch's Forest almost certainly had multiple entry points and methods as well.

"Are you going in right away?"

Ju-hee asked, watching Su-myeon lost in thought.

"Hard to say. For now, I think it'd be better to organize what we know a little more carefully before we enter."

Wherever the entrance was, they would eventually have to go in at least once and see who was trapped there.

But charging in carelessly might result in them saving no one at all while only making the monster that controlled the ghost story more wary of them.

"So... you're saying that if someone goes missing, I won't even realize it happened, and only the rest of you here will remember? Because it's an 'unnatural' phenomenon, like the name of our agency says?"

Mi-ae repeated what she had understood from Han-su's and Hwi-yeon's explanation.

Fortunately, after already experiencing the cognitive dissonance of an unnatural event during the incident involving Hyeon-seok, she seemed able to accept the concept without too much difficulty.

Su-myeon nodded, deliberately leaving room for other possibilities.

"That's right. So for now, save every record you just found."

"Yes, sir. Which records should I save?"

"The posts you just found."

Su-myeon answered automatically.

Then stopped.

Mi-ae's eyes shifted slightly, a hint of confusion creeping into her otherwise relaxed expression.

"Just now?"

She asked the question as though she had absolutely no idea what he was talking about.

No sooner had they finished explaining it than an unnatural phenomenon, overflowing with a sense of wrongness, occurred right in front of them.

After a brief, awkward silence, Su-myeon immediately turned Mi-ae's chair slightly to the side and pushed it away from the desk.

Then he looked at the computer she had been using.

The browser window that had displayed the posts only moments earlier was now completely white, as though an error had occurred.

Su-myeon refreshed the page at once.

Plain black letters appeared against the blank white background.

[404 not found]

The requested page could not be found.