Chapter 93: Crossed Paths (3)

At Sa-rin’s words, Su-myeon naturally looked confused.

After one unexpected revelation after another, he had reached the point where he did not even know what he should question first.

“The reason I came all the way here in the first place was because of that place.”

Sa-rin looked like someone entirely focused on explaining her purpose to Su-myeon and persuading him.

Regardless of how Su-myeon reacted, she continued saying what she had come to say.

“One of my clients who had been hospitalized there kept saying they were seeing strange things, so I went to visit them and realized there was some kind of strange energy flowing through the place.”

Even the god Sa-rin served had sensed the strange energy.

It had originally been such an auspicious place that even the dead could have lived there, yet now its energy felt hollow, as though some strange hole had been punched through it.

“I found out about this place while looking around and investigating that.”

“Then are you saying a ghost story also appeared there?”

At Su-myeon’s question, Sa-rin tilted her head.

“I wouldn’t know that. But....”

The only thing she could answer with certainty was exactly what she had felt.

“It feels similar. It isn’t as strong as what’s beneath this place, but the range is wider.”

If that was the case, Su-myeon needed to investigate it as well.

He already suspected that Young-cheol’s doctor friend had disappeared from the hospital.

If things were as the shaman had sensed, there was a possibility that the entrance to a ghost story itself existed there.

“Understood for now. We’ll investigate it.”

“Could I come with you?”

Su-myeon thought for a moment at Sa-rin’s suggestion.

There was a chance she might be useful.

Now that Bell had told him that occult beings, beings referred to as gods, truly existed.

If Sa-rin really was a shaman and could detect the entrances to ghost stories, she could be useful compared to the way they had been blindly searching for them until now.

“Yes, then. Could you wait for a moment?”

They needed to get the team ready.

At Su-myeon’s words, Sa-rin nodded.

When she was having an ordinary conversation, Sa-rin gave off a relatively quiet and mild impression.

That made the difference from earlier feel even more dramatic.

If that had been an act, she would probably have been better off becoming an actress than a shaman.

“What is it? What did she say? Is she really a shaman?”

Ju-hee spoke when she saw Su-myeon come out of the meeting room.

At her question, Su-myeon adjusted his glasses and briefly summarized the conversation he had had inside.

When Seoul Shinui Hospital was mentioned, Ju-hee practically went pale.

And understandably so.

“Seoul Shinui University Hospital? The hospital Hyeon-seok was admitted to?”

Back when Young-cheol had still worked there.

Hadn’t all of them gone there together before?

At the time, none of them had sensed anything strange, much less anything ominous.

“That’s why I’m going to check it out. Who do we currently have available for field work?”

At those words, every team member with field experience raised a hand.

Su-myeon appreciated the enthusiasm.

But there was something that bothered him.

“For now, I think we need to go down into White Night Land one more time too.”

It was partly because of what Bok-eum had said, but if White Night Land really was changing its rules, they absolutely needed to check.

Considering that Exit 4 of Sadang Station was one of its entrances in the first place, pretending not to know about it and simply leaving it alone did not sit right with him either.

But it was still highly risky for Su-myeon himself to go inside right now.

“How about Han-su hyung and Team Leader Hwi-yeon check White Night Land together with Mu-yeon?”

Han-su did not look particularly pleased by Su-myeon’s suggestion.

“What if you end up entering a ghost story directly from the hospital?”

“......Isn’t going into White Night Land more dangerous than that?”

Compared to the chance that there really was a ghost story entrance at the hospital and that they would accidentally enter it immediately.

Going into White Night Land was obviously more dangerous.

Even more so if the master of that place was waiting for Su-myeon.

At Su-myeon’s words, Han-su finally nodded in reluctant agreement.

“Understood.”

It was a little strange, but apparently Han-su preferred being told to go somewhere more dangerous than where Su-myeon was going.

Hwi-yeon and Mu-yeon also nodded as though they had no objections.

There was also the calculation that even if a somewhat dangerous situation arose, Mu-yeon, whose body was already perfectly optimized for ghost stories, would somehow be able to help.

Next, Su-myeon picked up the internal phone.

After calling Young-cheol up from the medical room as well, Su-myeon explained the situation with the shaman.

The abnormal phenomenon she had sensed at Shinui Hospital.

“If we’re going to investigate that, I think we’ll need your help, Manager Kim, since you used to work there.”

Among the people currently working there, there would probably be some who already knew Young-cheol.

That would help lower their guard.

“And....”

Su-myeon glanced for a moment at Cheshire, who was still sleeping....

No, who was sleeping his ass off, then briefly shook his head and continued.

“Ju-hee noona, that shaman guest over there, you, and me. The four of us should go to the hospital.”

“Uh, I... I....”

Among the people who had volunteered for the field team, Ji-hoon was the only one who had not been assigned anything.

Su-myeon shook his head.

“For now, stay in the office for this one. As you already know, sending a whole crowd into a ghost story isn’t necessarily the answer.”

The same applied to investigating an unfamiliar hospital.

Ji-hoon accepted Su-myeon’s explanation and decided to remain behind at the office with Mi-ae and Du-pal.

“Everyone thinks it’s over once you all happily run off into a ghost story, but things outside are no joke either.”

Mi-ae sincerely wanted more manpower.

Especially since the place they were heading to this time was a hospital that was currently operating normally.

“All right, first we send a request for authorization over here....”

Without wasting even a moment, Mi-ae immediately began teaching Ji-hoon the work.

From obtaining advance authorization to enter restricted areas without problems to preparing for the aftermath in case a ghost story was confirmed.

He was about to learn that preparing to enter a ghost story was far more complicated than he had expected.

“For today, we’re only checking what kind of ghost story might be there, and whether one is actually there at all.”

Whether they would enter a ghost story immediately was still undecided.

With the situation organized like that, Su-myeon stood up.

It was time once again to go looking for a new ghost story.

***

Su-myeon, Ju-hee, Young-cheol. And the unfamiliar shaman, Sa-rin.

The strange group of four stopped for a moment in front of Shinui Hospital.

“Does this place still feel similar to the basement of our Governance office?”

When Su-myeon asked Sa-rin, she nodded.

“That’s why I don’t even know where the being who originally resided here has been pushed off to now.”

After confirming Sa-rin’s answer, Su-myeon stepped inside the hospital.

The hospital was crowded. They slowly entered the chaotic interior, filled with all kinds of patients.

The reception area was already packed with people waiting after taking numbered tickets.

There was not the slightest sense of foreboding, though if he had to name something, there was a strange hollowness to the place.

But considering the unusual nature of a hospital, that was something one could easily imagine feeling anyway.

“Has everyone been doing well?”

When Young-cheol approached the reception desk, the eyes of the administrative employee who had been working mechanically and soullessly suddenly changed.

“Oh, Professor. It’s been a while.”

“Yes. I’m here for something different today.”

Young-cheol naturally steered the conversation toward whether they had received an official document.

“Ah, yes. Something about cooperating with an investigation by special government officials....”

The slightly flustered employee looked over Young-cheol and the people standing behind him.

A group of distinctive-looking people whose appearances did not match the phrase special government officials in the slightest.

But Su-myeon noticed her gaze and immediately took out his identification.

It did not list his exact affiliation, but it matched the official document, so she nodded and handed them visitor badges on lanyards.

“These are normally issued to dispatched medical teams. With these, you should be able to enter anywhere except the department handling radiation control.”

Of course, touching or investigating anything would still be subject to different restrictions depending on the location.

At the employee’s added explanation, Su-myeon nodded.

“That will be enough.”

With their visitor badges in hand, the four of them began checking the hospital section by section.

“But is there really a reason for a shaman to get involved in something like this?”

Su-myeon asked Sa-rin as they looked around the hospital’s various facilities.

“I was going to just let it go too, but my grandmother was making such a fuss about it.”

She let out a sigh, explaining that she had no choice but to act because of the strong insistence of the great shaman grandmother who served as her possessing deity.

“She absolutely cannot figure out where the spirit who used to reside here has gone. She wants to find out whether restoring this place to normal will make them return.”

“But if even a spirit like that avoids the place, does that mean things like evil ghosts gather here?”

Young-cheol asked suddenly, sounding genuinely curious.

Normally, he would neither have believed in nor cared about superstitious stories like this.

But after experiencing ghost stories, there was little left that he could dismiss as unbelievable.

Nothing could be more unrealistic than what he himself had gone through.

“No. It’s actually the opposite. Neither side can come here right now.”

There was nowhere else to investigate on the first floor.

Everyone stopped in front of the stairs to move to the next floor.

Su-myeon did not miss the opportunity to ask.

“By any chance... things like dokkaebi.... Would those also fall under the kind of gods you were just talking about?”

“Of course.”

Sa-rin’s firm answer cleared up some of his curiosity.

The fact that a dokkaebi had tried to contact him, even if it had been through Bell.

It seemed to be for the same reason that the grandmother Sa-rin called her possessing deity had come looking for him through Sa-rin.

Their places were being taken away by ghost stories, and they wanted that problem solved.

“Anyway, there’s definitely something here. Don’t you have any guesses? You seem to know a lot about this kind of thing....”

The university hospital was absurdly large.

If they kept wandering around like this, there would be no end to it.

At Sa-rin’s question, Su-myeon thought for a moment.

“The thing is.... there are about three ghost stories set in hospitals.”

“That many....”

At Sa-rin’s deflated voice, Young-cheol added.

“On top of that, my friend disappeared after a night shift. From Su-myeon’s perspective, all three ghost stories are possible candidates....”

That was why they had not investigated Shinui Hospital until now.

They were not even sure whether he had disappeared from this exact place, and even if he had, there were too many possibilities to search for an entrance while accounting for three different ghost stories.

That was why they had resorted to the brute-force method of simply checking the entire first floor....

“Then how about we go according to what you feel, Ms. Sa-rin?”

Searching this enormous hospital that way would take far too long.

Partly to test how useful Sa-rin could be, Su-myeon made the suggestion, and Sa-rin thought for a moment.

She closed her eyes and remained silent for a long while, as though feeling the energy around her, then began climbing the stairs.

She still had not opened her eyes, yet she placed each foot with the precision of someone who could see perfectly well.

After climbing the winding stairs for quite some time, Sa-rin stopped.

“.......”

They were on the sixth floor.

“The pediatric ward is on this floor.”

With Young-cheol’s explanation, everyone entered the sixth floor.

The nurses’ station came into view immediately.

Four people had suddenly appeared from the stairs instead of the elevator.

One of the nurses who had been looking at them curiously spotted Young-cheol and stood up from her seat.

“Oh my, Professor. What brings you here?”

“Ah, Nurse Seo. It’s been a while.”

Bringing Young-cheol along was already paying off handsomely.

While Young-cheol naturally lowered the nurses’ guard, Su-myeon casually slipped in a question beside him.

“Have you experienced any strange situations or incidents while working here?”

“Uh, no. Nothing particularly....”

“......Do difficult patients we occasionally deal with count as what you’re asking about?”

Come to think of it, customer-facing work really was the kind of job where troublesome people could be scarier than ghosts.

As the nurses looked at one another and thought about it, Ju-hee casually added this time.

“If there were any cases that were far outside the ordinary....”

“Where exactly are we supposed to draw the line for an ordinary difficult patient.......”

It sounded like comedy, but it was a sad story.

Su-myeon, who had been quietly listening to them, suddenly asked as though something had occurred to him.

“By any chance, are there any night-shift rules or special manuals shared among the staff?”

At that, the nurses listening all nodded at the same time.

“There is something like that. We have separate rules for the night shift.”

After saying that, they hesitated for a moment.

“But these documents aren’t allowed to be leaked outside....”

“Don’t worry. You received the official notice from the hospital, right?”

When he emphasized that there would be no problem showing it to them, the hesitant nurses took out a sheet of paper.

What she handed over was a manual that began in a way so familiar it almost gave him déjà vu.

[Shinui Hospital Nurse Night-Shift Rules]

These rules were written for the safety of night-shift workers and the smooth operation of the ward. Be sure to familiarize yourself with them before beginning your shift, and external disclosure is strictly prohibited.