Chapter 59

[Revision pending on item 1 - Anomaly detected in unit 404. Item requires amendment after investigation.]

Even after Han-su spoke, the man merely stared blankly at his face.

In the suffocating silence, Ju-hee suddenly thrust a hand into the pocket of Su-myeon's jacket.

Knowing that Cheshire was inside, Su-myeon was not particularly startled.

Cheshire was still nothing more than a small, soft, squishy doll.

"We haven't entered the ghost story yet, right?"

Ju-hee asked as though seeking confirmation one more time.

Which meant that the man standing before them, suspicious to the point of being uncanny, was unquestionably a person from reality.

And yet the man facing Han-su clearly did not seem to be in his right mind.

There was something so strange about his eyes that it would almost have been easier to believe he belonged to a ghost story.

"People have always been scarier than ghosts, haven't they?"

"........"

He wasn't wrong, but still.

At Su-myeon's remark, Ju-hee looked at him for a moment before turning her gaze away.

Even so, if they really weren't inside a ghost story yet, that was at least some relief.

By any reasonable measure, this was not a situation in which the three of them could be overpowered by a single man.

"Are you the resident of unit 404?"

"......What of it?"

Han-su was the one who broke the silence again.

When the man finally answered, his voice was cracked and hoarse, but otherwise sounded like that of an ordinary middle-aged man.

Han-su, who had been gripping the fire door firmly, finally pulled it all the way open.

Naturally, his overwhelming grip strength made that possible.

"........"

Light from the stairwell spilled over the unfamiliar man, illuminating him completely.

The movement also triggered the sensor lights inside.

Under the bright lights, the man who had seemed so sinister moments ago looked perfectly presentable.

Only his eyes remained unsettling, and his wariness seemed excessive.

"I'm a detective with the National Police Agency."

Han-su's police ID was useful in almost any situation.

He took it out and held it up for the man to see, but the man did not so much as glance at it.

Normally, unless someone doubted the authenticity of the ID itself, hearing the word "police" would make them lower their guard at least somewhat.

The man's reaction was stranger still.

"So what."

If anything, his wariness only intensified.

"Have there been any strange occurrences around here recently?"

The more suspicious the man became, the more brusque and businesslike Han-su's tone grew.

To anyone watching, he would have looked exactly like a detective carrying out official business.

The man's eyes darted anxiously from side to side before he spoke.

"Nobody has disappeared...."

With that, he released the fire door and headed toward unit 404.

Then he went straight inside.

The conversation ended there.

The group exchanged looks.

"........"

Apparently, all three of them had reached the same conclusion.

That had only made him more suspicious.

Han-su had never mentioned anyone disappearing.

And yet the man had somehow known they were looking into missing people and had brought it up himself.

"That's strange."

This had gone beyond instinct.

It was objectively strange.

At Su-myeon's words, Ju-hee immediately asked,

"Should we go in?"

"A forced search without a warrant is illegal."

But thanks to Han-su's uncompromising respect for the law, the group had no choice but to back down.

Inside a ghost story would have been one thing, but in reality they could hardly tear down a stranger's front door simply because he seemed suspicious.

In the end, the three of them returned to the emergency stairwell empty-handed and closed the fire door behind them.

Ju-hee asked Han-su,

"What was he like while you were talking to him? He didn't seem sane."

"He was... certainly strange. But there are more mentally unstable people in reality than you'd think."

They did say there was hardly a modern person alive without some kind of mental problem.

Han-su's point was not entirely unreasonable.

But the location was far too coincidental for the man to be dismissed as nothing more than an ordinary citizen with a psychiatric history.

Su-myeon remained suspicious.

"........"

He fell silent in thought, but eventually reached the conclusion that there was nothing more they could do for the moment.

Whether the man was simply mentally ill or genuinely connected to a ghost story—

"...?"

Just then, a strange sound reached Su-myeon's ears.

The electronic beeping of a door lock being released.

The others seemed to hear it as well and turned around.

Sure enough.

The fire door remained closed, but bright orange light seeped through the gap beneath it, as though the sensor lights beyond had switched on.

The man from unit 404 had clearly opened his front door, stepped outside, and was now listening from the other side of the fire door.

"........"

And beneath that door—

Han-su carefully reached down and picked up something lying in the narrow gap where the light leaked through.

It was a round silver coin engraved with a rose.

'Why is this....'

Why was it here?

There was only one possible reason.

This place was connected to a ghost story.

Su-myeon could almost sense someone's presence beyond the door.

A chill swept over him, and he gestured to Ju-hee and Han-su.

Whatever they needed to discuss, there was no reason to do it here.

'Let's get out for now.'

At Su-myeon's signal, the group left the building without a word of protest.

Once outside, Han-su immediately called someone.

He appeared to be checking the apartment through his police contacts.

"......Right, got it."

Ending the call curtly, Han-su spoke.

"It's a household with quite a history of problems."

He briefly summarized what he had been told.

Building 404, unit 404.

Over the past two or three years, complaints involving that unit had skyrocketed.

Foul odors, noise, illegal dumping in communal areas, and so on.

But strangely enough, the records were filled with cases in which the police arrived only to find no trace of any of it.

Noise or dumped rubbish, perhaps.

Those could be noticed and dealt with before the police arrived.

But could a stench severe enough to make a home nearly uninhabitable really be erased without a trace in an instant?

And it was impossible to dismiss everything as the work of a single malicious complainant, because the reports had not come from only one household.

The apartment above.

The apartment below.

The one directly across the hall.

All of them had repeatedly filed complaints.

There really did seem to be something wrong with unit 404.

"And for the past year, the apartments above, below, and across from it have all been empty, so apparently there haven't been any more complaints."

In the end, every apartment surrounding unit 404 had been vacated.

For apartments in Seoul, that was hardly a normal occurrence.

"......I had no idea there was a household like that here."

Even though he lived in the same apartment complex, directly across from the building in question, Su-myeon had never known such a household existed.

Of course, in an individualistic society like today's, it was difficult to hear neighborhood gossip unless one happened to participate in the local community.

Especially for a young person living in an apartment, there were hardly any opportunities to interact with the neighbors.

"Then what do we do now?"

Ju-hee, apparently deciding that it would be difficult to learn anything more from the area, asked what their next move should be.

"For now, do we just keep going up and down the stairwell until we get pulled into the ghost story?"

Or should they keep confronting the resident of unit 404 directly and try to dig something out of him?

At her proactive suggestion, Su-myeon paused to think.

"That's far too inefficient."

As Han-su said, the plan was terribly inefficient.

Trying to force their way through the worst possible odds?

That would be different if they had some way to raise those odds.

If simply walking up and down a staircase were enough to drag someone into a ghost story, there would hardly be anyone left who hadn't disappeared into one.

"Let's find another way."

For now, they had at least confirmed with reasonable certainty that this place was suspicious.

If they returned to the office and discussed everything together, perhaps they could come up with a new approach.

Su-myeon turned away, forcing himself to ignore the sensation that the rustling of leaves was still lingering faintly in his ears.

***

"You need more research done?"

When they returned to the office, Du-pal already had the conference room prepared, as though he had been waiting for them.

After everything they had experienced, everyone had become something close to a semi-expert on ghost stories.

"For now, I think we should investigate from both sides, just in case."

Su-myeon gave instructions to the others, who had spread the ghost-story materials across the table.

"The three of you look further into unit 404."

Hwi-yeon, Mi-ae, and Du-pal would investigate from outside the ghost story.

"We'll enter the ghost story and focus on rescuing people first."

Su-myeon, Han-su, and Ju-hee would investigate from inside.

When he divided the team in half, everyone nodded.

Mi-ae looked around with obvious fascination, but accepted the arrangement without complaint.

"Yes, sir. Should we also look into the complaint history and any real-estate transactions?"

People who disappeared into ghost stories tended to leave unnatural circumstances behind.

Su-myeon's parents were one example.

The home they had owned had simply passed into Su-myeon's name, leaving behind an unusual paper trail.

It could prove to be a meaningful line of investigation.

"The biggest unresolved issue right now is still the method of entry, isn't it?"

"That's true, but....."

Hwi-yeon and Ju-hee both turned their eyes toward Su-myeon.

Having other people rely on him was still something he had not grown used to, but Su-myeon quietly sank into thought.

If entry was probabilistic, he had already managed to overcome such odds several times.

The Ellis Hotel.

Sadang Station Exit 4.

For both incidents to have been nothing more than coincidence would have been unlikely.

Yet Su-myeon had entered both with relative ease, and strange situations had continued to occur around him ever since.

Su-myeon himself.

Perhaps there really was something unusual about him when it came to ghost stories....

"Um.... Hey?"

Just then, Mi-ae, who had been making calls and gathering information from several public agencies, spoke up.

"Unit 404 isn't the only problem here."

Unit 403.

Unit 304.

Unit 504.

All three apartments directly adjacent to unit 404.

"They aren't just empty. ......There's something strange about the ownership records."

More precisely, the circumstances looked as though the owners themselves had disappeared into ghost stories, much like what had happened in Su-myeon's own case.

"One of them belongs to a two-year-old who's living in an orphanage, another is currently up for a state auction...? And the last one apparently belongs to a bank? Except there aren't any records showing how ownership changed hands."

Wasn't that a little too strange, even by their standards?

As Su-myeon listened to Mi-ae, he felt his skin crawl.

This many people had been disappearing so close to him?

Because he had already begun to suspect that he might somehow be unusually prone to being drawn into ghost stories, his thoughts naturally spiraled in an ominous direction.

"For now....."

For now....

He opened his mouth, but the words would not come easily.

What exactly were they supposed to do?

"If you want to make a mess first and clean it up afterward, we can do that."

Hwi-yeon said it firmly.

It was a rather dangerous thing to hear, but knowing there was someone willing to deal with the consequences afterward expanded their options more than Su-myeon would have expected.

When reality and a ghost story—an absurd, unnatural phenomenon—became tangled together so thoroughly that the line between them blurred....

"...Even illegally?"

Ju-hee asked quietly.

Hwi-yeon nodded without hesitation.

"As far as material matters like property damage are concerned, do as much as you need."

"Is that how the NIS always operates?"

Du-pal, who had been listening from the side, asked slyly.

Neither Hwi-yeon nor Mi-ae could exactly deny it.

Strictly speaking, freely accessing and investigating records held by public institutions was hardly legal to begin with.

"........"

Han-su still looked uncomfortable.

But Su-myeon had made up his mind.

Ghost stories had already distorted and entangled his own reality more than enough.

If someone was willing to clean up the aftermath, what did a little illegality matter?

"If it means we can save people, isn't it worth trying anything?"

At Su-myeon's words, even Han-su eventually nodded.

Once that decision had been made, their next move was obvious.

"Let's force our way in."

It was time to enter unit 404, the very center of the problem.