Got Dropped into a Ghost Story, Still Gotta Work (Novel) - Chapter 53
Chapter 53
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Translated by Jinmu
Read it only at Novelbyu.com & Utoon.net
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Baek Sa-heon opened his eyes.
In fact, it would be correct to say that he had not slept a wink.
‘Dammit.’
After entering ‘Horizon Lodge,’ he had been on edge to somehow survive well with his limbs intact and find a way out.
And at least half of that must have been trying to read Kim Sol-eum’s expressions and cater to him.
‘Bastard.’
There was no such thing as shame. Because it was something done to live.
…Worrying about whether to go to Kim Sol-eum’s room right now was in a similar vein.
‘I have to secure some information.’
That crazy guy clearly knew something. He thought he should milk him to prepare a trump card for survival.
However….
“…….”
Was Kim Sol-eum truly a crazy guy?
To be precise, why did he… save him?
In fact, he knew. He knew the fact that even though Kim Sol-eum could have killed him or used him as a scapegoat several times at the exhibition, he had not done so.
He had given him a hard time a few times, but when looking at the end result….
‘No!’
It must have been because it was fun. Because it would have more variables and be more fun if he were alive!
Baek Sa-heon quickly concluded. Such a lunatic was a first in his life….
‘…Still, I don’t think he would lie about information.’
He opened his room door with a strange trust and…….
Something was in front of the door.
“…!!”
Since the lodge where the sun had already set was plunged into darkness, the silhouette right in front of his nose was distinguished a step late.
A male of similar height to himself.
…It was Kim Sol-eum.
‘Fuck!’
He was startled, but to be honest, he felt slightly relieved too.
Was it not better than an unknown human.
Because at least he wouldn’t try to kill him.
“Hey……”
Just then, his eyes adjusted to the darkness distinguished it.
An axe was held in the hands of Kim Sol-eum, who had quiet eyes.
“…….”
‘What?’
An axe, of all things.
For a moment, he almost rubbed his single remaining eye, but soon came up with a plausible assumption.
“Did you by any chance pack that to prepare for the killer…”
Suddenly, another assumption crossed Baek Sa-heon’s mind.
The text messages Kim Sol-eum kept sending.
[Watch out for the serial killer]
That was perhaps…….
An advance notice?
“Goodbye.”
The axe fell on his head.
* * *
And the next morning.
Leaving their room while listening to the sound of heavy rain, the couple realized that a somewhat familiar melody was mixed into the sound of the rain.
Hmm, hmmm, hummm, hmmm.
A hum.
“Isn’t this the song that played when my car’s navigation system broke down?”
“Oh my, it seems to be… does the local radio play it?”
Breathing in the quiet dawn air still remaining in the atmosphere, they packed the cassette tapes like treasures and walked through the hallway to the kitchen, when…
“Auuuaaaagh!!”
They ended up seeing something stuffed inside the kitchen furnace.
As if firecrackers and toys had been put inside and detonated, the furnace, with its surroundings completely burned, was filled to a bizarre degree.
A dry, charred lump of charcoal.
And from that dark red charred lump, two strands like bent sticks protruded, popping out to both sides.
What hung at the end was….
Sneakers.
A half-burned human foot.
“Aaaagh!!”
“Oh my god! Is that a person!?”
“Auu, auu, what on earth is this, auu!!”
The erupted shock and screams echoed through the lodge, and one by one, people who heard the sound came downstairs.
And they joined in the screaming.
“What is the matter… Uaaagh!!”
“Huuuugh!!”
Whether college students or the middle-aged surrogate driver, everyone fell into a panic.
One person even slumped down with a deathly pale face.
It was the young man who had identified himself as an office worker and communicated via written messages due to a sore throat.
But… clearly, weren’t there two office workers?
‘Could it be!’
The couple pointed at the feet in the furnace.
“That young man who came with you… could it be that young man? Huh? The eyepatch! The one wearing the eyepatch….”
The office worker youth seemed to look closely at the completely burned sneakers, then covered his mouth and barely managed to nod.
“Agh!!”
A person died.
Someone who was conversing with them until yesterday!
The moment they realized that, shouts and laments ran rampant again here and there.
“Call 119 right away!”
“What is this, fuck!!”
“This is why you shouldn’t just use the kitchen of an old house randomly! A slip-up causes a fire like that and an accident occurs!”
But a small whisper must have also been heard in their hearts.
‘Is it truly an accident?’
Can only a person burn completely like that without the fire spreading to other places…?
In such a terrible state?
‘Could it be…….’
Fallen into a panic, the people rushed to the phone.
And after a while.
Their spines turned cold.
“Th-The phone isn’t working. The dial tone won’t go!”
“Caretaker! Where did the caretaker go! A person has died here embassy!”
However, the caretaker of the lodge who said he would attend to them well was nowhere to be seen, as if by a lie.
Inside the dark mountains where heavy rain poured down.
Inside the lodge, there was only them and the humming…….
“…….”
“…….”
Hmm, hmmm, hummm, hmmm.
Outside the window, a terrifyingly large amount of rain was pouring, and overnight, perhaps a landslide had occurred, as soil covered the bus stop.
“The road… is completely buried.”
“My car!!”
Like that, the people came to realize it.
Hmm, hmmm, hummm, hmmm.
That something went wrong.
“Th-This… was running over there.”
“…….”
Next to the corpse stuffed in the furnace, humming was coming out of a small, old analog cassette player.
Hmm, hmmm, hummm, hmm….
Click.
One college student who turned off the cassette player pulled out what was inside.
An old ivory tape.
“…!”
The pale-faced office worker took out his notepad and hastily wrote words with a trembling hand.
[It seems to be the cassette Employee Baek had…]
“Oh, goodness.”
The nightmare began from that moment.
* * *
Lunchtime.
There were fairly neat soup and rice, perhaps prepared in advance by the caretaker, but the people did not lay their hands on them as if by agreement.
Instead, eating the energy bars or snacks they brought, they wandered around the lodge searching for a spot where the unworkable smartphones would connect.
Naturally, there was no result.
Under the heavy rain, the gloomy lodge was isolated without any link to the outside, depressing and dreary….
‘This is driving me crazy, seriously!’
One of the college students who was tapping on the similarly unopenable SNS app sat in the living room and anxiously turned off his smartphone screen.
“Fuck!”
“Ah, this bastard is fucking scared out of his mind.”
Beside him, his friends from the same climbing club pushed each other toward the corpse in the furnace, of which only legs remained, giggling in horror.
They were even playing like a joke, secretly taking a few photos, but perhaps they lost their appetites, as they didn’t even open the calorie bars or chocolates they brought.
Still, they were somewhat looser than the other visitors who were terrified.
They relied on their numbers.
‘Well, since there are three of us.’
Even if there was a bastard trying to kill people. He wouldn’t be an idiot and surely wouldn’t target the side moving around in large numbers first.
‘He would kill the humans who came alone, or well, the person left alone first.’
In that sense, his anxiety subsided a bit.
“Hey….”
It was just when the college student was about to chat with his friend.
Slide, a chocolate bar containing peanuts was thrust before his eyes.
Turning his head, the office worker held up his notepad with a pale face.
[Would you like to eat this? Because I don’t think I can eat it…]
“Pardon? No.”
He replied bluntly, but beside him, one of his friends giggled.
“That guy can’t eat peanuts.”
[Ah… I am sorry]
The office worker sat quietly on the sofa again as if depressed.
Did they say he was a supervisor? At first, his impression seemed quite formidable, but since seeing the colleague he came with die, he looked completely weak and feeble.
‘He’s scared.’
Should I say he developed an impression where if he got hit a few times, he would lose his spirit while crying, “Oh my, oh my.”
“Hey, a smoke?”
“Yeah. Fucking dying here.”
In the midst of that, the two friends disappeared briefly to have a smoke.
The office worker also picked up his unconnectable smartphone, glanced at the furnace once with a dark expression, and then went up to the second floor.
Like that, silence arrived.
“…….”
He was left alone in the confusion.
It was somewhat chilling.
‘In movies, they always get attacked at times like this.’
The college student shook his legs, then glanced around with a wary expression.
He realized the presence of the jackknife in his pocket and felt a bit comfortable, but it was brief.
‘Why the fuck did they go by themselves.’
In the end, he set out to search for his friends in the backyard himself.
Gripping the jackknife tightly, his steps reflexively quickened as his back felt a chill.
And he opened the back door of the kitchen leading to the rainy backyard.
Click.
There was a damp smell of water.
‘They must be in a place with a roof.’
Surely they wouldn’t get rained on just to smoke. So the college student intended to circle around along the roof and head to a place like a connected warehouse to find his friends.
However, the more he walked, the stranger he felt.
Something fishy pricked his nose.
‘Iron?’
It was a smell that would likely come from rusted iron.
Seeing that there were many old objects in the warehouse, maybe it was the smell of rust due to a rain leak.
The college student turned the corner making such an assumption.
“Hey, Park Kyung-soo….”
And a strong iron smell to the point of paralyzing his nose struck.
“Uh, u-u-uh…?”
Inside the backyard warehouse, there was an old wood-chipping machine.
And that machine seemed to have operated properly even when putting in something other than wood.
Thud-thud.
Mincemeat was spilled from the outlet of the machine that should have spewed sawdust.
Torn clothing, blood, meat, and bones were all ground up and messily scattered all over the floor.
“…….”
What is this?
What…… is this?
In an instant.
His brain, unable to comprehend the situation, refused to process, then understood the situation a beat late.
He did find his companions.
Turned into mincemeat.
“Uuueeeegh……!”
When his panicked brain began to pour out vomit and screams,
another sound blended in.
Through an old audio player.
Hmm, hmmm, hummm, hmmm.
The sound of a cassette tape.
“Heeek!”
The college student spun back and ran like mad into the lodge.
Goosebumps and terror chased him to the top of his head.
“Student there, why are you running around…”
“Aaaagh!!”
The college student had a fit and slapped away the hand grabbing his shoulder.
“Fucking don’t come near me!”
“W-What?!”
He raised his head.
The puzzled faces of the people staying in this lodge were visible.
And their commonality!
‘The tape!!’
Right!
What if the killer who committed this crazy act did this targeting the tapes?!
The college student immediately rummaged through his pocket and held up his tape.
“Look at this! This!”
His eyes flared wildly and spit flew.
“I’m throwing this away! Take it if you’re going to take it! I, I fucking clearly gave up?! I gave up!!”
Clang!
The college student who threw the tape to the floor ran like mad again, entered his room on the second floor, and closed the door.
And only after locking the room door could he breathe out.
“Huuueeegh….”
Anxiety made his eyes roll.
The mashed lumps of flesh and fragmented bones hovered and thudded inside his head.
Thud.
Thud.
Should he build a barricade with furniture in front of the door?
Thud.
No, rather it seems like it would block the door to escape.
Thud.
The college student stared at the old mother-of-pearl lacquer wardrobe in conflict, then simply stuck to the wall next to the wardrobe and held his jackknife.
And he stared intently at the room door.
Thud…….
As he leaned his back, his breath returned.
‘Just try to open it by force…!’
Then he could fucking scream at the top of his lungs and swing the knife. If people rushed over, what could the killer do!
He just had not to let his guard down.
“He absolutely can’t, he absolutely can’t….”
Beside the college student muttering like mad…….
Click.
Gently,
the wardrobe opened.
And the next morning, the college student ended up welcoming other people through the wide-open door.
As a corpse swollen like a sausage with bumps protruding all over his body.
Death by allergic shock.
The climbing club disappeared completely like that.
“Aaaagh!!”
When a perfectly fine office worker and three college students were found as corpses in a single day, the people went completely insane with terror.
“The inheritance! Someone among us is killing other people to get more of the inheritance, yeah, it’s certain! He wants to kill us all to silence us and take the tapes easily!”
“Honey, the caretaker of the lodge is suspicious, I told you that bastard was like a psycho?! Here…”
“It is a ghost! We are all possessed by a ghost!! Hahaha!!”
The middle-aged man who shouted did so as if he had lost his mind, then pushed people aside and rushed outside.
“Agh!”
Rumble.
In time, the sound of thunder was heard.
No, overlap with the thunder, it seemed another sound was also heard.
Boom!
“…!”
“W-What is it!”
Startled by the roaring sound, the people looked out the window.
The official muttered gloomily.
“…A landslide.”
It had rushed in again ‘just in time.’
Caught up in the spilled soil, the middle-aged man who rushed out as if out of his mind disappeared as if swept down the mountain.
Aaaaagh….
His scream receded into the soil down the mountain as if fading away.
It was a confirmed death by crushing.
Rumble… Boom!
The sound of thunder filled the outside of the lodge instead of the humming, and lightning flashed.
“…….”
“…….”
A suffocating silence flowed between the frozen people….
Remaining people, four.
* * *
The second night.
Searching every nook and cranny of the lodge for a way to contact the outside, the couple was returning to their room, panting.
There was no harvest, but they had noticed something else.
“Heeek, hik……”
“Fucking breathe quietly, you bitch!”
“Agh!”
The husband, who slammed the head of his companion introduced as his wife, trembled his eyes and rushed out of the living room, running up to the second-floor hallway alone.
The person who just happened to be stepping out of his room carefully was surprised to lock eyes with the bloodshot husband.
“You there!!”
It was the office worker who had been communicating via written messages due to a sore throat.
Startled, he took out the notepad from his bosom and tried to write something, but the man shaking what he held came first.
“This, this gold frame…!”
He had taken off the gold picture frame that was hung in the living room just now.
He pointed at the contents inside with wild eyes.
The rabbit is baked in the kitchen,
The deer is caught in the backyard,
The pigeon is fattened in the room,
The sheep slices a piece in the living room.
“People are dying just like this!”
“…!”
The person baked in the kitchen, the person ground up in the backyard, the person swollen in the room!
“The caretaker or whatever, in any case, he is playing games with us! This, this might even be broadcasted! No! Anyway, it is certain that he is playing with us!”
The office worker widened his eyes as if surprised.
The man, whose conviction grew stronger at that reaction, shouted.
“This time it is the living room! A person will be sliced to death in the living room! It is certain! Before that, we must find a way out….”
“Oh.”
…….
Huh?
Just now, he spoke….
“You are unexpectedly quick-witted. Brown.”
“Brown?”
That was the man’s last words that day.
* * *
“Sol-eum?”
“Yes!!”
“Mmpf! Mmmpf!”
The man raised his head. He could not speak, as if a gag was stuffed in his mouth.
Even so, the man screamed at the top of his lungs.
“Mmmmpf!!”
Neither the fact that this location was a basement smelling of musty mold nor the darkness to the point of being hard to see even an inch ahead was the main reason for his scream.
Because another head was right next to his head!!
Namely,
only the head!
“Mmpf!”
The pale face of the deceased, placed on a tray, lay right next to his nose.
It was maddening.
With tears, snot, and cold sweat trickling down, the man whose face was a complete mess screamed to be saved.
But the gag swallowed everything.
“Mmmpf, shh, mmmpf!”
“Are you scared? Please bear with it a bit. Because I am bearing with it too.”
A calm and quiet voice returned.
The man rolled his eyes, looking up as he struggled to distance himself from the head.
And he realized.
‘That office worker…!’
A young man dressed in a black training suit was frowning, looking down at him.
And looking at the blood-stained cotton gloves in his hands as if in contempt, he put them back on with a sigh.
And he picked up the axe.
“Mmmmmmmpf!!!”
“Why is it that even when people know in their heads that nothing changes, they still scream first? It’s just exhausting for both of us.”
“Mmpf!! Mmmpf!!”
“Let’s not waste our energy in vain.”
He is a madman.
This bastard, this bastard was the killer…!!
The man wanted to do anything, somehow negotiate, plead, or even counterattack, but his tightly bound body and blocked mouth did not permit it.
Tears trickled down from his eyes.
“Ah, the physical and mental pain is relieved a bit…? Well, I guess it was something like that.”
The office worker checked the blade in a dry voice.
The axe blade slid against the rough surface of the glove.
“It is quite rational, but I still don’t like it much.”
It was used as originally intended.
A flashing swing slicing through the air.
Thud.
Clatter…….
“…….”
“…….”
In the quiet workroom, Kim Sol-eum lowered the axe.
And he spoke in a slightly bright voice.
“Almost done.”
Remaining people, three.