Chapter 76: The Red Cloak….(1)

[4. Newly updated information on the survivors.]

4-1) They feel a close bond with one another and form groups.

4-2) The size of the groups is...(omitted)....

.

.

.

Damn it.

Su-myeon blinked his tired eyes and ground out a curse inwardly.

He had barely slept and spent the night tossing and turning.

The last thing Han-su had said had driven his tension to the absolute limit.

More than ten people had all hidden themselves in the darkness and watched us?

In the end, Han-su and Hwi-yeon had taken turns standing watch, excluding Su-myeon, who needed to keep his head clear.

“Awake?”

Han-su asked as he picked up the jacket he had taken off and put it on.

Su-myeon, who had been lying inside the tent staring blankly at the ceiling with his eyes open, let out a small, hollow laugh.

No matter how reliable the two people watching over him were, it was not exactly easy to fall asleep.

“I’m awake. What about Hwi-yeon?”

“I’m... awake too.”

It was not exactly a refreshing morning greeting.

The sounds of people talking could already be heard outside the tent.

“For now, we’re ordinary civilians. And finding Hwi-yeon’s younger sibling should be our highest priority.”

Before leaving the tent, Su-myeon decided to clarify one thing first.

“So, what exactly is your sibling’s name?”

At Su-myeon’s question, Hwi-yeon answered with a subtle expression.

“Mu-yeon. Lee Mu-yeon.”

***

With that answer, they opened the tent, and before them was a mountain filled with bright sunlight and fresh green foliage.

More than ten tents stood clustered together in the low clearing.

It was the very picture of an utterly peaceful campsite.

“Everyone awake?”

The middle-aged woman who had taken such good care of Hwi-yeon the night before spoke while stirring a pot.

“We don’t have one big enough pot, so we always have to make it twice like this.”

“Most people already ate and left. Only the ones still here need to eat, so why don’t you join us for a bowl?”

Just like the night before, they were warm and friendly.

There was no real reason to refuse, so the three had no choice but to approach where the women were beckoning them over.

“Thank you for taking such good care of us.”

When Su-myeon awkwardly expressed his gratitude, they handed them steaming bowls of soup again.

This time, it was properly seasoned meat soup with actual chunks of meat in it.

“Oh, don’t mention it. The people who went hunting caught something decent, so we have more than enough for all of us to eat our fill.”

Hunting.

A mountain this full of insects and vegetation having wild animals in it was perhaps not strange at all.

“But... the people who left earlier....”

Where had they gone?

When Su-myeon cautiously asked, the women answered with soft laughter.

Meanwhile, the meat in the soup gave off a nauseating smell.

Even so, thinking of their kindness, Su-myeon simply swallowed it down.

“To the village. We’re a scouting party that regularly checks the traps and searches the surrounding area because of the hunting. There’s a separate village where everyone lives together.”

...There was a separate village?

If they actually called it that, then a considerable number of people must be living together as a group.

Maybe Hwi-yeon’s younger sibling really was among them.

Su-myeon continued his questioning carefully.

“By any chance, do you know a man named Lee Mu-yeon?”

He could feel Hwi-yeon tense up and sharpen her senses.

But the answer came back almost disappointingly quickly.

“No. I’ve never heard that name before...?”

Why was he suddenly asking something like that?

Seeing the question in their expressions, Su-myeon gave a bitter smile and took another spoonful of soup.

“I saw that name in some graffiti at Mimi Lodge too. After meeting Seung-min hyung yesterday... I don’t know. It just suddenly came to mind.”

Aimless curiosity.

He spoke as though rambling, but the moment Seung-min’s name came up, the women burst into laughter.

“You mean the graffiti at Mimi Lodge? I heard he and Hye-won wrote something like that when they were young?”

“Ah, what a shame I never saw it with my own eyes. I could’ve teased him about that for the rest of his life!”

Like neighborhood ladies excited over ordinary gossip, they began chattering away.

The many couples who had met here and eventually married.

The large fields and paddies in the village, along with its surprisingly decent facilities.

They seemed genuinely proud of everything they had built and cultivated.

Su-myeon kept giving awkward reactions, half thinking they were exaggerating.

He would find out whether it was true once he saw the village himself.

***

“.......”

After seeing that ‘village’ with his own eyes, Su-myeon could only stand there in shock.

A village? They called this a village?

“It looks pretty livable, doesn’t it?”

At the woman’s proud smile, Su-myeon had no choice but to nod.

If anything, what he had thought was exaggeration had actually been modesty.

The place they reached after walking for around thirty minutes was closer in scale to a town than a village.

The unexpected sight left Su-myeon stunned.

A whole society consisting of comfortably more than several hundred people had formed here.

'This is insane....'

Just how much causality was this place swallowing?

Was this even something I could deal with?

“No....”

A despairing murmur escaped Hwi-yeon beside him.

It was unclear whether they could find one person in a place like this with nothing but a three-syllable name, and the thought of how they could possibly terminate this ghost story was even more overwhelming.

They could not simply kill everyone and choke off the ghost story the way they had in The Witch’s Forest.

How could they possibly do that when everyone here was living a perfectly normal social life like this?

“Oh, you made it here pretty quickly.”

While they stood blankly at the entrance to the village.

Seung-min, at least a familiar face by now, approached them.

Apparently, he had been among the people who had left earlier.

“All right, then Seung-min can show you around from here. We should head home ourselves.”

The women handed Su-myeon’s group off to Seung-min and disappeared without hesitation.

The way they acted as though the three of them would naturally become part of this village was slightly unsettling.

“Then let’s greet the village elder first. After that, I’ll show you an empty house you can stay in.”

With that, Seung-min guided the three of them to a cozy log cabin.

Of all the houses built along the steep hillside, the log cabin stood at the highest point and had an excellent view of the surroundings.

On top of that, the house itself was charming, with flowerbeds full of pretty flowers in all kinds of colors.

The kind of house that would only appear in a fairy tale or an all-ages Western fantasy game.

Su-myeon was starting to half give up on trying to figure out just how far this ghost story intended to go.

“Grandma! Some new people arrived, so I brought them over to introduce them!”

The person who came out was an elderly woman old enough that the word old woman fit her perfectly.

Her hair was completely white and her face covered in wrinkles, enough that one could easily believe she was ninety years old.

Her back was at least still straight, but she seemed to have difficulty moving and leaned on a cane.

“My, my. More new faces.”

The old woman clicked her tongue sympathetically and approached Su-myeon and the others.

How in the world had an old woman like this survived....

'...Forget it.'

This was a ghost story where the questions simply never ended, so Su-myeon decided to stop thinking about it right there.

It seemed better to simply accept that this was the kind of place it was.

What mattered was not those minor details, but confirming whether what the survivors possessed was malice or genuine goodwill.

And he would also need to find out just how much desire they had to escape.

“Hello, ma’am. My name is Han Su-myeon.”

Su-myeon bent slightly to bring himself closer to the short old woman’s height as he greeted her.

“What? Oh.... Right, right. Want to come inside and have something to eat?”

“Oh, Grandma. We only came to say hello. There’s that empty house near the logging site. It’s all right if we give that one to them, right?”

As expected of a Korean grandma.

Seung-min quickly stepped in to stop the old woman from immediately trying to feed them.

“Oh my, is that so? All right. Go ahead.......”

She immediately looked disappointed at hearing they would not eat, enough that Su-myeon actually felt a little guilty.

After Han-su and Hwi-yeon greeted the old woman as well, Seung-min quickly moved them along.

“She’s just the oldest person here. We only tell her about important things out of courtesy. You don’t really need to worry about it.”

Seung-min joked that he was not even sure whether she remembered everything anyway.

But was that not strange too?

Missing people who had suddenly fallen into an unfamiliar world.

There was nothing strange about them gathering together and forming groups, but the scale was far too large.

And why had these strange customs appeared?

The unexpected situations kept piling up until Su-myeon’s head was starting to hurt.

“This is the only empty house without an owner right now. I think the three of you will have to stay here together for the time being. Is that okay?”

The place Seung-min brought them to was a cabin located fairly far from the center of town.

It stood somewhat higher up, overlooking the town, and Su-myeon rather liked the location.

“By any chance, have you ever seen someone named Mu-yeon?”

As he looked around, Su-myeon asked without much expectation.

But the answer he received was unexpected.

“I’ll tell you later.”

With that, Seung-min left them behind and walked down the mountain path.

***

After Seung-min dropped those words on them and left.

Hwi-yeon paced around the living room while biting her fingernails.

What he had left the three of them with had caused a small amount of confusion.

“So... does that mean he knows him? Or he doesn’t?”

Hwi-yeon kept repeating the question.

Of course, Su-myeon had asked Seung-min the same thing when he said they would talk later.

'Later.'

Seung-min had said it so firmly before leaving that there had been no way to press him further.

Su-myeon could hardly say he did not understand how Hwi-yeon felt, so he held his forehead and let out a sigh.

“I think.”

When you were debating whether to say something or not, it was usually better to say it.

Su-myeon voiced the thought he had been turning over in his head.

“I think we should go out and take a look around the town.”

At Su-myeon’s words, Hwi-yeon, who had been standing there anxiously, immediately grabbed the outerwear she had put in the wardrobe.

Clunk-

“....”

Of all times, an unfamiliar sound came from inside the wardrobe at that exact moment.

Hwi-yeon reached in and felt around.

The sound of wooden boards knocking together was coming from inside the wardrobe.

It was nothing more than a minor noise, but some instinct told Hwi-yeon that something was strange, so she lightly knocked against the wardrobe’s back panel.

Rattle-

“...Looks like something’s been added behind it?”

It was not simply the sound of the wardrobe’s plywood failing to fit properly. The back panel had been reinforced with a second layer.

Why waste wood like that in a place where they had to shave down pieces one by one just to make plywood?

“......This house isn’t new either. Someone definitely lived here before.”

Han-su spoke as he ran his hand over a table that showed signs of use.

After hearing that as well, Hwi-yeon did not hesitate and tore off the wardrobe’s back panel.

Clatter-

The sound of several coins rolling across the wooden floor rang out.

They recognized the Rose Coins immediately, but none of the three kept their eyes on the coins for long.

“What... is this?”

The panel they had torn off was densely covered with pieces of paper.

It looked as though someone had taken a diary they had written and torn it apart page by page, then pasted the sheets there to hide them in secret.

Holding their breath, the group each began reading whichever sheets their eyes landed on.

[The day I first came here, I was so confused. But I was lucky enough to meet kind people and receive their protection.]

[People who are almost unnaturally kind. But are they really all looking for a way out?]

[I was assigned one of the newly built houses this time! I’m so happy! I can’t believe I have a home of my own. Even so, I still want to go back to my real home.]

[I was introduced to the oldest grandmother in the village. Anyway, she seemed like a nice old lady! Starting tomorrow, I decided I’ll visit often and keep her company.]

The entries that followed were strangely similar to their own experiences.

The only difference was that what had taken this person quite a long time had all happened to them in a single day.

There were dozens of pages in the diary, so they could not read all of them immediately.

However, one sheet written in the thickest, most violently scrawled handwriting caught their attention first.

Written on it was a sentence completely at odds with the rest of the diary, which had been filled with anticipation and nervousness about a new life.

[Trust no one. They’re going to offer me to the wolves. Damn it, damn it! I don’t want to die. I don’t want to die!]

Su-myeon fell into thought for a moment as he read the diary.

The strange brightness and kindness he had sensed throughout the village.

He felt as though he was beginning to understand the source of the incongruity hidden beneath it.