Chapter 68: The End of the Ghost Story (1)

[5. Case Closed – As of the time this case file was written, it has been confirmed that The Witch’s Forest ghost story has been concluded.]

"Agh! Wait, wait!"

Su-myeon was stamping his feet and screaming while Han-su held both of his arms down.

"This could become serious if we leave it like this!"

Su-myeon stared at Han-su in disbelief at the urgency in his voice.

"Inflammation is a serious problem! Hold still!"

With Ju-hee's voice joining in as she held a pair of delicate tweezers, there was truly nowhere left for him to escape.

Despite all the grim determination in the air, all they were doing was pulling splinters out of Su-myeon's palm.

Granted, there were quite a lot of them, but did this really warrant all this?

Hwi-yeon, who had returned to the office after finishing her interview with the rescued survivor, sighed when she saw the scene.

She was grateful that this was the worst injury he had suffered, but still....

"What kind of lame injury is this?"

"Then what, should I have come back with an ear torn off by a monster?"

After hearing Su-myeon's retort, Ju-hee poured disinfectant over his palm.

The sting nearly made Su-myeon scream, but he clenched his teeth again.

"You've already had a tetanus shot, so once you've removed all the visible splinters, let me know."

Young-cheol, who had been moving busily around the office, spoke to Ju-hee as she continued pulling them out.

Back when they had been dealing with the skeletons by the lakeside.

The problem had started because there had been no suitable blunt weapon, so Su-myeon had simply snapped off a random tree branch and swung it.

No matter how weakened they had become, he still had to strike solid skulls dozens of times.

Caught up in the desperation of the situation and the psychological strain, he had failed to notice it at the time, but meanwhile Su-myeon's palms had been torn to pieces, filled with wooden splinters.

"And you didn't even notice and kept firing a gun and handling your phone!"

Thanks to that, Su-myeon had returned to reality with his palms drenched in blood.

His belongings and clothes had been soaked with it as well, so there was no way to escape Ju-hee and Han-su's scolding.

Su-myeon was far too timid to tell them that since he had survived anyway, they should just let it go.

In the end, all he could do was sit there and take it.

"From now on, you'll need to equip yourself with proper weapons."

"Not just firearms. We'll make sure to stock blades, blunt weapons, and other kinds of weapons too."

"If possible, we should also prepare high-performance lighting and a wider variety of survival equipment."

Listening to Han-su and Hwi-yeon discuss the matter, Su-myeon had to endure an almost unbearable stinging pain.

Pulling out the tiny wooden splinters only hurt a little, but the real problem was the fragments that had buried themselves completely beneath his skin.

"Hold still!"

Ju-hee firmly warned Su-myeon yet again.

Her hands, carefully making tiny incisions in the surface of his skin and extracting the splinters, allowed not even the slightest twitch.

How am I supposed to hold still when it stings like hell?!

Suppressing the urge to protest, Su-myeon settled for stamping his feet again.

After a long, long ordeal, they finally managed to remove all the splinters. Both of Su-myeon's hands were wrapped tightly in bandages.

"They're all small wounds, so they should heal quickly. But if you feel like there's still something stuck anywhere, tell me immediately."

Once Young-cheol finished the final treatment, Su-myeon's medical care was finally over.

Thanks to that whole commotion that wasn't really a commotion, he actually felt as though his head had cleared a little.

"Are the rescued people all right?"

"One of them is almost completely fine. He says he spent more than a year in that forest without eating or drinking anything...."

Young-cheol tilted his head as he checked the neatly wrapped bandages around Su-myeon's hands.

"Considering that, even his malnutrition isn't particularly severe. The problem is the man whose body swelled up."

The man whose body had become grotesquely enlarged.

Only after that man returned did Agent Mi-ae finally come to fully understand the bizarre phenomenon she herself had experienced.

Her memories of the posts she had been completely unable to remember suddenly became clear, as if someone had flipped on a light switch.

Her brain was not a computer, yet having memories arbitrarily deleted and restored was an unpleasant experience.

"That swollen man... is the person who wrote the post I saw, right?"

Having gained a much more tangible sense of what ghost stories were capable of, Mi-ae asked Young-cheol again to confirm.

"Most likely. His body weight tripled in a single day, so his body can't handle the strain right now."

"Is his life in danger?"

When Su-myeon asked Young-cheol another question, Young-cheol shrugged.

"I don't know.

It's something that could never happen naturally."

Simply breathing would probably be enough for his weight to start dropping.

Provided his other organs could keep functioning and sustain his body in the meantime.

"......As for the remaining issues, why don't we get some rest first and talk again tomorrow."

Hwi-yeon seemed to have more she wanted to say, but she quietly began wrapping things up.

Su-myeon, Ju-hee, and Han-su all looked thoroughly exhausted.

"We'll take care of the rest, so the three of you should head home and rest."

Su-myeon had absolutely no desire to refuse Hwi-yeon's suggestion.

If possible, he wanted nothing more than to lie down right there and fall asleep.

"I'll drive you home."

Had that feeling shown on his face?

Han-su immediately volunteered to take Su-myeon home.

Su-myeon had no desire to refuse that either.

Du-pal, who had been handling coordination with the outside world while everything unfolded, suddenly spoke to Su-myeon as he stood up.

"So in the end, this thing called The Witch's Forest... it's over now?"

He had heard a rough explanation while Su-myeon's hands were being treated, but apparently wanted confirmation.

Meeting the middle-aged man's eyes, where tension and fatigue were mixed together, Su-myeon nodded.

"......I can't be certain, but I hope so."

There was no evidence, so he couldn't say for sure.

In theory, probably.

That was the best answer Su-myeon could give.

"For now, let's think about everything else tomorrow."

Hwi-yeon cut off the conversation there once again and sent Su-myeon on his way.

Su-myeon also stopped the thoughts trying to continue in his head and waved a hand vaguely.

***

"We're here."

Su-myeon barely opened his eyes when someone shook him.

Apparently, he had fallen asleep in the car on the way home.

A crushing exhaustion washed over him, enough that he wanted to ignore Han-su, pretend he couldn't wake up, and just keep sleeping there.

"Haaah.... Yeah."

Su-myeon forced himself upright.

I'm so sleepy I could die.

Literally.

After barely pulling his miserable consciousness back together, Han-su spoke.

"Would it be all right if I stayed the night here?"

The moment Su-myeon looked at Han-su, he had no choice but to nod reflexively.

He had been so consumed by his own exhaustion that he had failed to notice it, but Han-su looked seriously tired as well.

If Han-su tried driving all the way back home in that condition, it would hardly be surprising if he got into an accident on the way.

"If you need pajamas or blankets, just take whatever you need."

After entering the house, Su-myeon left only those words behind before collapsing onto his bed.

At least he had managed to shower briefly and change clothes in the Governance's shower room while they were treating and disinfecting him.

He didn't even have the strength to change now.

Su-myeon immediately sank into sleep.

***

Is this... a dream?

Su-myeon looked around from within a mountain of snacks piled high enough to fill his vision.

For a moment, he almost mistook it for one of the candy houses in The Witch's Forest, but it was a little different.

More precisely, it looked as though several candy houses had been gathered together and dumped in one place, smashing into one another and breaking apart.

'Where... is this?'

It looked far too different to be inside The Witch's Forest.

A quiet Korean mountain village, so ordinary it actually felt familiar.

The place where he stood was the front yard of an old hanok tiled-roof house that had modern features mixed into it.

Along with the feeling of familiarity, Su-myeon realized where he was.

This was his grandfather's house.

His grandfather, who had died when Su-myeon was very young.

'Why am I suddenly dreaming about this place?'

And what was with all these ominous-looking snacks filling the entire yard?

Just as Su-myeon began thinking that there was probably no point trying to find a reason because it was only a dream—

He sensed someone sitting on the wooden-floored porch, eating snacks.

"What? How did you get in here...."

The other person, who had a high, youthful voice, spotted him as well and shot to her feet.

Along with the voice of a girl who looked somewhere in her mid-to-late teens, the hem of her modified hanbok skirt, which fell just past her knees, fluttered lightly.

A girl with her hair cutely braided into twin pigtails, wearing a modernized hanbok decorated with adorable lace.

Her black hair was ordinary enough, but her brilliant blue eyes seemed almost to glow as though lit from within, and a single horn protruding from the top of her head stood out sharply.

The horn was positioned slightly to the left, making it look as though there ought to be another one on the opposite side for symmetry.

"When you cause trouble, you really do cause it on a grand scale."

The inhuman-looking girl spoke incomprehensible words to Su-myeon in a dignified pose and an imposing tone.

When he tried to approach her, the girl suddenly shouted at the top of her lungs, loud enough to shake heaven and earth.

"Wake up!"

"......!"

At that moment, Su-myeon jolted awake in shock.

'......It really was a dream.'

Thinking what an absurd dream that had been, Su-myeon sat up, his body stiff and aching.

He thought he had fallen asleep in the early evening, but it was already almost noon.

He was far, far too late to go to work on time.

Judging by the messenger notifications, Hwi-yeon had sent him a message telling him to come in whenever he woke up.

'...I should still go to work.'

With a sigh, Su-myeon climbed out of bed.

At least he had slept deeply enough to feel refreshed, so aside from muscle soreness in his arms and shoulders, he felt fine.

He barely managed to untie the bandages wrapped tightly around his fingers, and in just one day the wounds had already healed quite a bit.

"......."

Then again, they were only wounds from some splinters.

Maybe that was normal.

With that thought, Su-myeon stepped into the living room and saw Han-su asleep on the sofa.

Seeing such a huge man curled up awkwardly on the couch made Su-myeon feel a little guilty.

[Han-su is at my place too. We'll eat together and then head in.]

After sending Hwi-yeon a reply, Su-myeon headed to the kitchen.

There wasn't really anything to eat, but he did have some ramyeon.

Breakfast could just be something simple.......

"......."

Su-myeon glanced once at Han-su, still sleeping in a cramped position, then opened a delivery app while taking out five packs of ramyeon.

Even if he was going to keep things simple, if he intended to work Han-su hard, he should at least feed him properly first.

After choosing something that could arrive quickly, Su-myeon ordered five rolls of gimbap as well, and just as the ramyeon was nearly finished cooking—

He heard Han-su waking up in the living room.

"......I'm sorry.

I ended up sleeping much more deeply than I intended."

"Of course you did. Get some more rest."

At Su-myeon's words, Han-su looked at Su-myeon's hands, now free of the bandages.

"Everyone checked so thoroughly yesterday that I don't think there are any splinters left. Nothing's infected either."

Noticing his gaze, Su-myeon set down the bowl of ramyeon and opened his hands in front of Han-su.

There were adhesive bandages over the spots where the skin had been lightly cut open, but overall his hands looked clean.

Only then did Han-su seem reassured and begin eating the ramyeon.

The gimbap arrived soon afterward, and the two men silently started devouring the food.

Only then did Su-myeon realize he was hungry, but the feeling made him oddly uncomfortable, so he ate slowly.

He found himself wondering whether this hunger was really his own.

"From next time on."

Su-myeon had barely eaten half a roll of gimbap when Han-su, already working through his third roll by himself, suddenly spoke.

"We're staying together. No exceptions."

What was that supposed to mean?

When Su-myeon gave him a puzzled look, Han-su shoved three pieces of gimbap into his mouth at once.

Watching the food vanish almost magically into Han-su's sturdy, handsome face, Su-myeon found himself quietly impressed.

"This time, and the time before that as well. I'm grateful that you trusted me enough to leave the other side to me."

Han-su swallowed the food neatly before continuing.

If he weren't doing this kind of work, he'd probably be great at mukbang.

Su-myeon had been distracted by that thought and only belatedly understood what Han-su meant.

"...Ah, was it stressful for you to split up and take separate roles inside the ghost story?"

"It wasn't stressful."

It was just that every time, Han-su felt as though he was being confronted with the limits of what he could do.

And if a moment ever came when Su-myeon was put in danger because of Han-su's own bad judgment, he didn't think he would be able to forgive himself.

"For the sake of what might happen, I'd rather you didn't place too much faith in me."