Chapter 81: Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing (2)

[8. An unidentified parasite has been discovered within the ghost story. There is currently no clear method for dealing with it, but it is presumed to be closely related to the length of time spent residing within the ghost story. Caution is required when approaching survivors.]

Su-myeon hurried away from Grandma’s house.

The way he quickened his pace while remaining wary of what was behind them.

He had definitely noticed or seen something.

The others forced down their frustration and waited until they were certain no one was anywhere around them.

Was this far enough?

After walking quite a distance ahead, Su-myeon turned back toward Hwi-yeon and Han-su and blurted out,

“That thing isn’t human.”

Su-myeon continued in a rapid but low and precise voice.

“There’s something hiding behind her back. Something—I made eye contact with something. Behind her back, like some kind of stuffed doll with its stuffing bursting out, there was something...!”

As Su-myeon hurriedly continued, visibly agitated, Han-su stopped walking and grabbed hold of him.

“You really made eye contact with it?”

At Han-su’s calm question, Su-myeon took a deep breath.

It was certain that every villager was covered in that black aura.

But only behind Grandma had he been able to see something strange.

There had been a tiny gap that looked almost like a stain on frayed clothing.

Something unknown had forced its way into that opening like vermin burrowing through her back, and an eye gleamed from within as though waiting for an opportunity.

So....

“......Yes. We made eye contact. It may have noticed that I saw it.”

Su-myeon exhaled deeply and calmed down a little.

Hwi-yeon rubbed her forehead.

“That strange black energy... you said everyone in this village had it.”

Grandma had been the only one where he had actually seen something through the opening.

But there was a possibility that the same thing was happening to everyone else as well.

A city made up of humans whose insides had been eaten away while something else consumed them from within.

Suddenly, the countless houses spread across the city below looked like one enormous insect nest.

Feeling nauseated, Su-myeon suppressed the urge to retch and spoke with a grimace.

“I’m sorry, Hwi-yeon. We need to get out.”

They could no longer continue investigating Mu-yeon.

At Su-myeon’s words, Hwi-yeon nodded.

“Then from now on, we should look for the exit....”

Su-myeon gestured as though cutting off the rest of her sentence.

Confused, but understanding enough to stay quiet, Hwi-yeon followed his gaze and turned her head.

“So this is where you all were.”

Seung-min was standing there.

“Where did you go? It doesn’t look like you’re coming from the logging site.”

At Seung-min’s words, Su-myeon lightly bit his lip.

He too looked as though he had been swallowed by that black thing, but from the front, there was still nothing else Su-myeon could make out.

They did not have enough time to keep pretending to comply while secretly evading him.

Either they had to leave this city and find the exit.......

'No. I’ll make the exit come to us.'

After organizing his thoughts, Su-myeon took a short breath and continued.

“We’re going to look for a way out on our own.”

At Su-myeon’s words, Seung-min stopped.

The friendly smile on [N O V E L I G H T] his face twisted.

Su-myeon could see his composure breaking.

The reaction was clearer and faster than expected, leaving Su-myeon momentarily taken aback, but Seung-min first turned his head and checked their surroundings.

“Why are you trying to leave?”

At Seung-min’s quiet question as he looked around, Su-myeon answered with a strange feeling.

“Are you kidding? The better question is why wouldn’t we try to leave? This place is an illusion, and reality is, literally, reality.”

“Is that the only reason?”

A vague intuition struck Su-myeon in that instant.

Whatever answer he gave Seung-min now would have a major impact on what happened next.

Based on everything he had deduced so far, Su-myeon decided to shake Seung-min.

If possible, they needed to unsettle him enough to turn him to their side.

Having made his decision, Su-myeon pulled his phone from his pocket.

He took a business card from his inventory and handed it to Seung-min.

“I’m Han Su-myeon of the Unnatural Threat Governance, an organization under the government of the Republic of Korea. We are agents dispatched to rescue missing persons trapped inside ghost stories.”

Seung-min had lived inside a ghost story for ten years.

A phone that functioned here, a business card pulled from the screen of that phone, and the name of an organization completely unfamiliar to him.

Everything before him was something he had never seen before, leaving him confused, but one thing was clear.

Su-myeon belonged to a completely different category from the countless survivors Seung-min had met until now.

“If you’re worried that spending so long here will make it difficult to return to society, we can provide sufficient assistance.”

Hwi-yeon also took out her business card and handed it to him, lending weight to Su-myeon’s words.

“We originally intended to persuade everyone gradually and carry out the rescue in a way everyone could accept.”

Su-myeon briefly explained why they had hidden their identities until now.

And thinking about it now, that had been exactly the right decision.

If they had openly announced something like that to everyone from the beginning, the villagers would probably have acted as a group to capture them.

“To be frank, the survivors in this city no longer seem to be at a level where persuasion will work.”

Human sacrifices were currently taking place in this city, with a small number being offered up.

Even if they returned to reality, it would be difficult for them to completely avoid responsibility for that.

And even setting that aside, even if they escaped.

There was no way to know how many of them had something unidentified parasitizing them the way Grandma did.

Sending all those people back into reality would be no different from releasing an invasive species into a stream.

Su-myeon swallowed all those thoughts and voiced only the cold conclusion.

“I’m saying we intend to give up on rescuing the survivors and leave.”

As he said that, Su-myeon watched Seung-min’s expression.

He had said he had a family.

A family dear enough that he had built a life with them here, so Su-myeon’s words were bound to provoke some kind of response.

'React somehow....'

With that thought, Su-myeon stared directly into Seung-min’s eyes.

Watching the turmoil raging within them, Su-myeon kept his hand resting over a weapon inside his inventory.

If Seung-min tried to interfere instead of helping them.

If he showed hostility.

'I’ll move first.......'

Su-myeon waited tensely for Seung-min’s response.

And after a long silence, Seung-min finally opened his mouth.

***

The headquarters of the Unnatural Threat Governance in Seoul.

Four days had passed since the field team entered the ghost story.

“Our dear doctor has arrived at Mimi Lodge too~”

Mi-ae’s distinctive high-pitched voice rang through the office.

They had not simply been sitting around the office doing nothing while waiting without a single update.

Concerned that a situation like The Witch’s Forest might occur again.

Teams capable of enforcing a perimeter and handling basic emergency measures were already stationed around Mimi Lodge.

So that even if injured personnel or rescued survivors emerged, they could respond immediately.

“......They’ll be all right, won’t they?”

Ju-hee spoke in a somewhat heavy voice.

Only Du-pal, Ju-hee, and Mi-ae remained in the office, but that did not mean they had no work.

“If you’re that worried, you can still go up to the mountain now.”

Du-pal, who had been busily checking paperwork, said to Ju-hee.

“It might be better to manage the field personnel from there instead of trying to do it from here with nothing but documents.”

There were countless situations that might arise at Mimi Lodge once Su-myeon’s group returned.

If the medical personnel and security teams were not to get in one another’s way, there would be value in having administrative staff directly on site.

Of course, Young-cheol, who had gone there as a doctor, could probably handle some of it.

“Should I? Then I’ll sort out the documents related to the field and take only those with me.”

Watching Ju-hee immediately rise as though she had been waiting for him to say that, Mi-ae shook her head.

“Is having a moth-to-a-flame personality one of the hiring requirements around here?”

“Can’t exactly deny that.”

At Du-pal’s shameless reply, Mi-ae pulled the corners of her mouth downward.

Working as an intelligence officer for the National Intelligence Service had hardly been an easy job either.

At least this place had looked more interesting than that, so when the offer came, she had readily accepted it....

'Everyone’s a lot more desperate than I expected.......'

Despite the organization’s name sounding almost like a bluff, everyone here spent each day repeatedly putting their lives on the line.

At least it was fortunate that no one forced her into those kinds of field assignments.

“I’m heading out!”

Watching Ju-hee hurriedly gather her things and paperwork before leaving, Mi-ae pouted again.

Sometimes, as the only employee in the organization with no experience inside a ghost story, she genuinely felt left out.

Files she had personally recorded yet could not remember.

Files that had vanished as though holes had been punched through the records.

The more those strange inconsistencies accumulated, the stronger that feeling became.

'Still, I’m not going in.'

She sincerely hoped she would never end up entering a life-or-death field assignment over something as trivial as feeling left out.

For now, that was all Mi-ae wanted from this job.

***

The first words Seung-min finally managed to say were within the range of what Su-myeon had expected.

“......Do you know a way for all of us to get out?”

It was the most positive question Su-myeon could have hoped for.

It was practically the same as saying he was willing to leave, if only there were a reliable method.

Seeing the possibility of persuading him, Hwi-yeon stepped forward.

“I’ve escaped from this place before.”

Hwi-yeon condensed the long story into a short explanation.

Her memories of the day she had been forced to escape alone after losing her younger brother.

And everything that had eventually brought her back here could, once summarized, be made surprisingly brief.

Since Seung-min already knew who Mu-yeon was, the sincerity of her story had effectively been proven.

“......Mu-yeon almost never talked about his older sister, so I was actually pretty surprised.”

Seung-min unquestionably knew Hwi-yeon’s younger brother.

The words of someone who had genuinely escaped this place before, standing beside someone as unusual as Su-myeon.

And with Mu-yeon connecting them, Seung-min had no choice but to believe what they were saying.

Almost as though he had given up on something, he started talking before they could even ask.

“I’m sorry, but your brother is already dead. It’s true. I saw it myself, so... I didn’t know how to tell you.”

At his words, Hwi-yeon turned her head away as emotion surged through her.

Su-myeon briefly patted her shoulder in an attempt to comfort her.

After watching Hwi-yeon struggle to compose herself for a moment, Seung-min took a deep breath.

Su-myeon could sense that he too was making some major decision.

“If my family... if my family leaves this place, could we receive basic assistance too?”

“We have support programs for people who return from ghost stories.”

With backing from a chaebol family as well, anything that could be solved through money or government administration was possible.

Han-su, who looked the least sympathetic of the three, answered in a mechanical voice, and Seung-min nodded.

If anything, the lack of emotion made him more credible.

A civil servant simply explaining an existing government program.

That was all he seemed like, and Seung-min spent a long time breathing deeply and rubbing his face as though trying to steel himself.

“You said the stairs that suddenly appear in the forest are the exit... right?”

“Have you seen them before?”

At Su-myeon’s question, Seung-min nodded.

“There are stairs that appeared the day before you arrived. They disappear again after a few days and show up somewhere else, but they’re probably still there.”

To the survivors settled in this city, the stairs and door that repeatedly appeared and vanished were objects of fear.

On the very rare occasions when someone had gone through that door, not a single one had ever returned.

And after swallowing that person, the stairs and door would disappear several days later.

“That is the exit. Just tell us which direction it is, and we’ll leave quietly on our own.”

When Su-myeon spoke with a firm expression, Seung-min’s gaze wavered.

Su-myeon did not miss it and added,

“If you want, you can come with us.”

Not only Seung-min’s gaze, but even his hands began to tremble.

After Su-myeon watched every one of his reactions closely, Seung-min cautiously continued.

“Wait here for a moment.”

With that, Seung-min turned away first.

Su-myeon carefully watched his back as he headed down the path at a fast pace, weaving through wooden fences and platforms.

In particular, he kept his eyes fixed on Seung-min’s back, where he had discovered the parasite, refusing to miss even the slightest detail.

“.......”

Even after rubbing his eyes and looking again, it was the same.

There was a tiny pitch-black opening on Seung-min’s back too, no larger than a single finger joint.

Unfortunately, there was no longer any doubt that something had already eaten into him as well.

The true nature of the black energy Su-myeon had sensed from every person in the city was now clear.