Chapter 60

[1. (Revised) Search for a definitive route of entry related to Unit 404.]

The next day, with Su-myeon leading the way, Ju-hee and Han-su returned to Unit 404 together.

They had considered every possible contingency—the chance that a physical confrontation might break out in reality, and even the possibility that they might end up inside the ghost story.

Having weighed every conceivable outcome, the three of them had come fully prepared.

THUD THUD THUD

Han-su knocked on the door of Unit 404.

There was no answer.

THUD THUD THUD

When Han-su knocked again, Su-myeon spoke this time.

"Is anyone home?"

Su-myeon pressed an ear to the front door for a moment.

Not even the ordinary sound of a television could be heard from inside.

The silence stretched on for a while.

Then, at last, there came the sluggish sound of movement from within.

Taking it as a sign that someone was coming to the door, Su-myeon gestured, and Ju-hee stepped back.

DING-DONG—

The instant the cheerful chime of the door lock disengaging rang out, Han-su seized the handle.

Han-su, who normally recoiled from anything illegal, had agreed, just as Su-myeon had suggested, to allow himself a small degree of flexibility under one condition.

When someone's life was at stake.

"What the—."

A startled voice came from inside as the door was held fast.

But this time, Han-su yanked it wide open and forced his way inside.

"What is the meaning of this?!"

The startled man was the same suspicious resident they had encountered the day before.

He tried to pull Han-su back out, but naturally, it was impossible.

Once the broad-framed Han-su planted himself in the entrance and held the doorway open, Su-myeon and Ju-hee were able to step inside with ease.

At first glance, the interior of Unit 404 looked like a perfectly ordinary home.

The living room was clean, with nothing visibly out of place.

And yet Su-myeon felt that something was wrong.

"What is this?! I'm reporting all of you to the police!"

"I am the police."

"Does being a policeman mean you're allowed to do this?!"

While the resident and Han-su continued their absurd standoff, Su-myeon scanned the interior.

Something about the fact that every single bedroom door in the apartment was shut made him uneasy.

Wasn't it unusual for an ordinary household to keep all its doors closed like this?

They had already forced their way into someone else's home.

He couldn't afford to drag this out any longer.

Trusting his instincts, Su-myeon opened one of the closed doors beside him.

"...!"

The instant it swung open, he flinched and instinctively stepped back.

The room was full of pigs.

"Wh-what is this?"

"What on earth...."

Su-myeon was just as stunned as Ju-hee sounded.

Literally, in an apartment in the middle of Seoul—

the room was filled with pigs.

These days, people kept all kinds of unusual pets, and pigs were hardly unheard of.

But these were unmistakably large pigs raised for meat.

Worse still, they were unnaturally swollen with fat and dressed in human clothing.

And the floor of the room, filthy beyond description, was heaped with cookies.

"Urgh...."

At the sight of excrement and cookies mixed together across the floor, Ju-hee gagged reflexively.

"Get out of there!"

The resident, abandoning his pointless struggle with Han-su, rushed over and shoved Su-myeon.

'Oh, damn it....'

Do I really look that easy to push around?

Why does every last one of them keep charging at me and throwing their weight around?

Driven into the room, Su-myeon nearly pitched face-first into the filth.

He barely managed to plant a foot on a clean patch of floor and regain his balance.

"What are you doing!"

Ju-hee hurriedly caught Su-myeon and steadied him.

Separated by a single doorway were two completely different spaces.

On one side, a perfectly ordinary home.

On the other, something foul and grotesque.

There was unquestionably something inside Unit 404.

The resident grabbed wildly at Su-myeon and Ju-hee, dragged them back out of the room, and slammed the door shut.

Now certain that this was no ordinary situation, Su-myeon asked him,

"Do you know something about the witch?"

At the question, the resident froze.

"Ah."

Then, as though suddenly seized by terror, his whole body began to convulse.

His hands and feet trembled uncontrollably.

"Aaaaaaaaaaa."

His eyes rolled back as he writhed in anguish, and then he abruptly seized Su-myeon by the shoulder.

Startled, Su-myeon tried to shake him off.

But the man's strength was monstrous, almost incomprehensible.

Pain shot through Su-myeon's shoulder as though the bone might shatter.

"N-no. No, no. I don't know. I don't know. I don't. I don't want to know. I said I don't know."

Han-su lunged forward and tried to separate them.

Yet somehow, the resident refused to let go of Su-myeon.

Would it be acceptable if this escalated into outright violence?

Was that, too, within the limits of what Hwi-yeon could clean up afterward?

Before Su-myeon, still weighing his options, could say anything to calm him, the man continued muttering without pause.

"Please, please. Please. I don't know. I said I don't know. Let go of me now. I, I...!"

"If you don't release him immediately, I will use force!"

Even at Han-su's warning, the resident continued babbling as he clung to Su-myeon.

His shoulder hurt, but more than the pain, Su-myeon was focused on the man's condition.

It felt wrong to dismiss this as nothing more than the ravings of a madman.

The resident was crying out desperately, as though pleading with someone.

But who on earth was he pleading with?

'It's obvious!'

The instant the man reacted to the word witch, Su-myeon understood instinctively.

This person was serving as bait for the ghost story.

He didn't know how it had happened, but normally, some location in reality became the entrance to a ghost story.

This time, however, the person himself had become the entrance.

No—

perhaps it wasn't only him....

"I see."

While Su-myeon's thoughts raced—

the resident, whose eyes had suddenly cleared, muttered under his breath.

"I see."

What on earth did he mean?

Before Su-myeon could make sense of it, the resident lunged at him again.

The same sense of déjà vu.

The same monstrous strength.

Su-myeon was hurled backward helplessly.

Han-su reached for him, but his hand slipped past and caught nothing but air.

"Ugh."

Su-myeon slammed into the room door the resident had just shut.

The door couldn't withstand the force.

It shattered.

Like most interior doors, it was nothing more than a thin slab of plywood, and it had no chance against the combined force of two grown men.

Was he really about to fall straight into that revolting, filthy room?

'I should've just kicked him off and dodged.'

This is going to hurt like hell.

No—

the filth was worse than the pain.

That was the real nightmare.

Along with that fleeting regret, Su-myeon's vision flipped sharply as he toppled backward.

THUD!

He expected the impact of his body hitting the floor.

But strangely, despite the loud sound, he felt almost no shock at all.

It was as though he had landed on a soft, plush stuffed toy....

"Ow!"

It hadn't hurt much.

And the cry hadn't come from Su-myeon.

The sound had come from inside his pocket.

It was Cheshire, yelping after being crushed beneath him when he fell.

"Ah, oh no. Sorry........"

Startled, Su-myeon began to pull Cheshire out of his pocket.

Then he stopped.

The impact had been absorbed.

And Cheshire had moved...?

More importantly—

the floor beneath him wasn't the revolting, filthy floor from that room.

It was soft earth.

Sssshhh—

Then came the sound of leaves rustling in the wind.

Realizing what had happened, Su-myeon slowly raised his head.

He was in a forest.

***

"What is this? What have you done to Mr. Su-myeon!"

Han-su, startled, seized the resident by the collar and hauled him upright.

Up until the moment he saw the door break and Su-myeon tumble into the room, he had merely been flustered.

But the instant he realized Su-myeon had vanished completely from inside the room—

Han-su's mind went blank.

"He's gone, he's gone! The pigs from before too... and Mr. Su-myeon!"

Ju-hee cried out in shock, but the resident gave no answer.

Instead, wearing an expression that seemed utterly deranged, he burst into laughter.

"Ha-ha."

"I have to fatten her up. I do hope she'll be pleased."

It might have sounded like meaningless raving.

But Han-su and Ju-hee understood instinctively.

The resident had sent Su-myeon to the 'her' inside the ghost story.

"Talk! Where did you send him!"

Han-su could not bring himself to physically assault the man.

He was still a civilian, after all.

But his roughened tone alone was more than enough to intimidate an ordinary person.

Even Ju-hee flinched at the force behind his voice.

The resident, however, did not react in the slightest.

"Ha-ha.... Ha-ha-ha."

Faced with a man who did nothing but laugh, Han-su thought grimly.

He had never been good at coaxing information out of people.

If threats didn't work....

***

One hour later.

Headquarters of the Unnatural Threat Governance.

"......So, you kidnapped... a civilian and brought him here?"

A handcuffed civilian was being dragged along in Han-su's grip.

Ju-hee, whom they had contacted in a hurry, had already relayed the broad outline of what had happened while they were on their way.

Even so—

wasn't this going a little too far?

Mi-ae looked at Hwi-yeon in disbelief.

"You do realize this could turn into a massive incident, right?"

"It doesn't matter. We have to save Mr. Su-myeon."

At Han-su's answer, Mi-ae sighed, shook her head, and returned to her seat.

Su-myeon was the only key they had to saving the hundreds—perhaps thousands—of people trapped inside ghost stories.

Hwi-yeon's gaze wavered briefly.

Then she nodded.

"We promised we'd handle the aftermath. So we'll have to find some way to handle it."

The handcuffed resident of Unit 404 still looked mentally unstable.

He showed no sign of even wanting to resist the unreasonable treatment.

He simply muttered endlessly, his pupils unnaturally dilated as though he were under the influence of some drug.

"I have to send more. More... it's still not enough. Not enough...."

Since he clearly wasn't in his right mind, the group called Young-cheol, the doctor.

But apart from mild symptoms of malnutrition, the resident's physical condition was entirely normal.

There wasn't so much as a trace of alcohol in his bloodstream, much less drugs.

"For one thing, psychiatry isn't my field."

Young-cheol couldn't offer them any further help.

"Do we really need to calm him down? We need to save the person we can save first! Ask him something—anything!"

Ju-hee, apparently unable to endure the situation any longer, cut in.

"No, he can't be saved. She'll devour him. He'll make a splendid feast for her."

At the sound of Ju-hee's voice, the resident reacted and began rambling again.

Ju-hee immediately pointed at him.

"That's clearly malicious! Trying to get Mr. Su-myeon devoured inside a ghost story... yes! It's basically solicitation to murder!"

Hwi-yeon pressed a hand to her forehead, looking troubled.

If only reality were simple enough for Ju-hee's argument to work.

In truth, covering the whole thing up would probably be easier than finding a legal pretext for what they were doing.

It was a contradictory situation.

They had to threaten someone in order to save someone else.

After some thought, Hwi-yeon finally spoke.

"...Then let's go in too."

She approached the resident of Unit 404 from a different angle.

"We need to go in too. That's allowed, isn't it? Isn't the point to feed 'her' more?"

Either way, the only way to save Su-myeon was to enter the ghost story themselves.

The alternative was simply to wait and hope he returned safely.

"......You'll go in too?"

Hwi-yeon's words seemed to get through to him.

The resident's expression changed.

Suddenly serious, he looked almost completely normal.

"You're going in too? You want to go in? Go in, go in! I'll let you in!"

Rescuing people was forbidden.

But entering the forest was allowed.

They could roughly infer the distinction.

At some point, Hwi-yeon had arrived at the same conclusion Su-myeon had.

"Most likely, this person was given the role of luring people into the forest as food for whatever monster lives inside."

Even after hearing Hwi-yeon's conjecture, the resident merely nodded.

"So bringing someone back out isn't allowed. But going in ourselves is."

"Yes, yes! Go in.... Everyone, go in...!"

At Hwi-yeon's words, the resident nodded again and again, almost shouting.

"Once you go in, you can't come out anyway. You can't come... no. No. You might survive! Maybe? Maybe!"

Desperate to lure more people inside by any means possible, the resident babbled incoherently.

None of them expected the ghost story to be safe.

But even so, they had to enter.

"Shut up and tell us how to get in."

At Han-su's words, the resident smiled.

"Ask, and seek, and knock. Then it shall be opened unto you."