Got Dropped into a Ghost Story, Still Gotta Work (Novel) - Chapter 77
Chapter 77
===================
Translated by Jinmu
Read it only at Novelbyu.com & Utoon.net
===================
I was currently walking up the stairs in the nightmare school with the Disaster Management Bureau agent.
…While binding the opponent and dragging him along like a prisoner.
For the record, I had blindsided and bound him with the very item he had handed to me.
“…….”
What a mess.
‘This cannot go on.’
It seemed I had crossed the line somehow.
By tomorrow, I might end up on the Disaster Management Bureau’s blacklist and, in the worst-case scenario, be requisitioned by the scales of evil.
Though it seemed the company would protect me, I didn’t want to handle the insane situation of being indebted to Daydream Co. …!
‘I-I have to restore my image somehow.’
There was never a day when the cold sweat on my back dried…
I spoke seriously first.
“If you swear not to scream, I will unlock the gag. Just nod your head.”
The agent’s murderous glare subsided.
And he nodded his head very silently.
‘…That’s a lie.’
If you’re going to deceive me, at least make it less obvious…!
Ultimately, I let out a sigh and spoke.
“I have absolutely no intention of harming you, Agent, nor do I intend to deceive you to leak the Bureau’s information and report it to the company.”
“…….”
“And… while making that statement just now, I felt no pain whatsoever.”
“…!”
“I know that the caramel you gave me is a truth serum used for torture.”
The agent’s pupils trembled.
“Of course, I don’t think you harbored any ill intent, Agent. It’s just…”
I stared into empty air with somewhat melancholy eyes.
“Even if I didn’t go out of my way to tell you that I work at Daydream Co., I wanted to convey that I had no intention of lying…”
Strictly speaking, it was a lie.
If things went south, I had planned to inject a painkiller delivered via rocket shipping from the Alien Shop and spout survival-based lies.
Sure enough, an uncomfortable pain surged from within.
‘Ugh.’
A feeling of my stomach twisting inside like a gastric ulcer.
But momentum was key here.
‘I can endure this much now without even showing it.’
The pain was stronger for lies filled with malice or strong intent. Since the statement I just made was close to an evasion, it wouldn’t even rank as level 1.
Let’s endure.
‘Next is…’
Trust.
At the same time, I unfastened the small silver badge in my pocket with one hand while subtly masking my expression.
And I openly showed that item, the ‘Silver Heart,’ to the agent.
“I’m speaking to you without relying on such effects.”
“…….”
“I will say it again. …If you swear not to scream, I will unlock the gag. Just nod your head.”
An indescribable conflict filled the agent’s eyes.
And around the time we stood on the landing.
He nodded very slightly.
“…….”
I removed the gag without another word.
The agent did not make a scene as promised.
‘Hmm.’
Good. Next step.
I returned the confiscated flashlight and pistol to the agent’s hands.
And I also loosened the bindings on his arms.
“This is…”
“Because you’ll need self-defense in such an urgent situation.”
‘Anyway, that pistol has almost no effect on targets other than ghosts or supernatural phenomena.’
Though it was said to work on evil people depending on the bullets, no matter how I thought about it, neither I nor Jang Heo-un seemed to be evil enough to meet that standard.
‘Mr. Jang Heo-un… there were no rumors of him doing crazy things for the past three months.’
However, since this agent must not run away before I finished building rapport, I didn’t completely undo the bindings.
I attached a plausible excuse to that as well.
“Since it’s too dangerous for you to escape alone, I will keep you bound only until your rational judgment returns.”
“…….”
It was about the time we climbed all the stairs while slowly keeping watch in all directions.
Suddenly, the agent asked.
“Is Roe your alias?”
“…….”
“Don’t you guys move in groups and call each other by aliases derived from your masks?”
“…That is correct.”
“Are you a group leader?”
“No. I’m just a rookie. And he… is my peer.”
I smiled somewhat bitterly as I pulled out the half-mask from my pocket and placed it on my face.
Then, a familiar texture, like tree bark with grown horns, covered my skin.
For some reason, the agent stared at me with a shocked expression.
And I heard Jang Heo-un’s dejected voice.
“…I’m sorry, Mr. Roe. Trying to help me…”
“Not at all. You must have been very flustered.”
Compared to Baek Sa-heon, who tried to screw me over no matter what, this level of situation was honestly something I had prepared myself for from the moment I started pretending to be a temporary agent…
Gesturing further, Jang Heo-un even made excuses to the agent for me.
“U-Um, Mr. Roe is a really kind and decent person. Even when we first met, he risked his life to save me in the Dark…”
“I-It wasn’t to that extent.”
Nice shot!
“We just… helped each other. To survive in the Dark together.”
“Mr. Roe…”
“…….”
The agent shut his mouth with an even more complicated expression.
But let’s find meaning in the fact that he didn’t try to bash my head with the butt of the small pistol.
“…Entering the 4th floor.”
And we finished climbing the floor.
[4F]
“…….”
We arrived, but…
‘It is nerve-wracking.’
In this ghost story, something begins to twist even further from the 4th floor.
First of all, even if a student dies, no announcement is broadcasted…
And it was extremely dark.
Frizz…
Most of the lights were already broken and dead, and even the few remaining ones were all flickering, with minor exceptions.
And the bigger problem…
…!!
“Gasp,”
Dozens of students were standing in groups in the hallway.
And they were already staring intently in this direction.
‘Sigh.’
Those students standing lined up on both sides like mannequins in the dark school hallway.
All the student entities on the 4th floor were 3rd years, and more than 100 entities had been confirmed in every exploration run that reached this floor.
If you only heard this far, you’d think it was just telling you to die.
However,
“…It’s alright.”
The agent gave information, even if in a stiff voice.
“They cannot leave those spots.”
Right.
The 4th floor is really too strange. In the first place, although we can’t witness those ‘students’ moving, we still see them change positions, right? But the 4th-floor students couldn’t move. It’s like their feet are glued to the classroom floor.
-From the recording of the 9th exploration record
Since they stood still without lunging, we just had to avoid entering the radius of the students’ territory.
And if we had to approach nearby, we could freeze their movements by staring at them continuously.
‘The problem is that it’s easy to miss spotting them because it’s dark.’
And they were very… very cunning.
There were many cases where they tried to catch us off guard with psychological warfare.
‘…Hmm.’
So that was how it was.
After confirming that Jang Heo-un was wearing the name tag he had obtained from a student of this school on his blazer, I spoke seriously.
“Then, let’s investigate the 4th floor slowly, being very careful.”
There were no objections.
We entered the gap between the students.
* * *
‘Phew.’
Jang Heo-un swallowed hard.
It felt truly strange.
Passing so close that his sleeves brushed against the school uniforms of the ‘student’ entities, trembling all over.
But he gritted his teeth.
‘I must be of help.’
Because it felt as though he had ruined this exploration for his grateful peer, Kim Sol-eum.
What had he been trying to do by accompanying the agent?
‘He must have been aiming for a high-score… clear, right?’
But according to the manual, the longer you survive here and the more name tags you gather, the higher the concentration of solution inside the dreamscape collector tends to be…
Perhaps because it was too dangerous, Kim Sol-eum didn’t even glance at the name tags attached to the 4th-floor students.
‘…I don’t know.’
Jang Heo-un decided not to make judgments for no reason.
Relying on his own intellect was not a good habit.
He simply stared hard at the approaching students.
Especially when entering places where the lights were all broken or flickering, persistently shining his flashlight.
Thud, thud.
“Mr. Bison, please look behind.”
“Yes.”
His voice trembled faintly.
Jang Heo-un walked backward while watching the rear.
In the path they had passed, he saw dozens of students turning their heads in this direction and stretching out their hands…
“I see the music room over there. Let’s push through just to that point.”
Moving feet.
Soon, a section with absolutely no lights appeared.
‘Phew.’
In the suffocating darkness, the students stood blankly, still peering at them eerily.
It was the moment they were carving their way through the gap while shining the flashlight.
Flicker.
A light flickered somewhere. It seemed like a blackout…
‘Huh?’
Wait a minute.
Something was strange.
‘There are no lights, so how did a light flicker?’
And Jang Heo-un realized a step too late.
It wasn’t a blackout.
What flickered was…
the flashlight of someone walking ahead.
Just now, someone failed to secure their vision.
…!
Jang Heo-un almost turned around. But a calm voice nudged his back first.
“Do not look back.”
“You…!”
“For now, we… must walk.”
Panting was mixed into Kim Sol-eum’s voice.
And…
The smell of iron.
Drip, drip…
In the field of vision of Jang Heo-un, who was walking backward, he noticed red liquid dripping onto the floor starting from a certain moment.
He couldn’t see properly because he was watching the student, but the soles of his shoes were slippery.
And,
Jang Heo-un also saw a student’s hand extended into the middle of the hallway, enough to bump into his waist.
It was dyed red, and blood was dripping from it.
Jang Heo-un held back a gag.
“M-Mr. Roe…!”
When he finally made his way out of the gap between the students and turned around,
Kim Sol-eum was clutching his stomach, his face pale as a sheet.
And the flashlight held in his hand flickered once more.
He smiled with a pale face.
“…The battery,”
-Effective lighting duration: 60 minutes
Indeed.
Something like an emergency flashlight didn’t have such a long usable time.
‘Ah…!’
The two of them, who had prepared their items in advance and kept the emergency flashlight as a spare for true emergencies, had failed to consider the remaining time on the flashlight the other person held…!
“W-Wait… Ugh.”
“D-Don’t speak!”
Even while suppressing a gag, Jang Heo-un tried to support Kim Sol-eum somehow. The agent reactively joined in.
In that manner, the Daydream Co. employee and the Disaster Management Bureau public official urgently supported the person and entered a classroom.
Though a few students were peering in there as well, they laid the person they had been carrying with difficulty down in an area out of the students’ reach.
And Kim Sol-eum, while sitting, spoke as he pressed down on his wound.
“You two.”
“…….”
“Leave me behind.”
Wearing the horned mask, he plugged his wound and managed a difficult smile.
“Ah, wait a moment.”
Kim Sol-eum reached out with the hand that wasn’t clutching his stomach and completely untied the Disaster Management Bureau agent’s bonds.
“I forgot. You should go now…”
Paying no attention, the agent reached into his pocket, pulled out a spare name tag, and stuffed it into Kim Sol-eum’s pocket.
But…
“You don’t have to give it to me. Didn’t you have a place to use it.”
“…….”
“Go on. Surely there are more of your people on this floor. If you join them, ugh, you will be fine.”
Kim Sol-eum’s brow furrowed slightly before smoothing out.
“Honestly, even if I die like this, there won’t be much of a problem with working at the company. The company would also be satisfied with this level…”
“That damn company!”
The agent clenched his fists tightly.
“Why on earth do you people trust such an absurd, disgusting organization!”
It was as if his raw nerve had been struck.
“Do you really believe a company that treats human lives so trivially would actually grant your wishes?”
…!
Jang Heo-un looked at the agent in surprise.
The agent spoke through gritted teeth.
“I know all about you working for the Wish Tickets. Do you truly believe in that ridiculous illusion? That a magic potion will unconditionally grant any wish?”
Kim Sol-eum looked up blankly at the agent.
“It does grant them.”
“…….”
“If the Wish Tickets were a lie, this structure wouldn’t be sustained. Once you obtain it, it grants any wish.”
“…Sigh.”
The public official let out a sigh as if he was about to go crazy with frustration, and spoke as if repeating a long-accumulated logic.
“Think about it. Suppose someone wished for world peace, and someone else wished for the extinction of humanity. How can both of those contradictory wishes be granted?”
Jang Heo-un, wearing the bison mask, flinched.
But Kim Sol-eum remained calm.
“From the perspective of the person making the wish, yes. It is granted.”
“What… does that mean,”
“It means the Wish Ticket is not meant to change the world, but is an object that omnipotently fulfills an individual’s personal wish.”
What on earth did that mean?
It sounded like a pseudo-religious doctrine of salvation.
Yet, Kim Sol-eum’s attitude was not religious fanaticism, but resembled the resignation of someone who had empirically verified the situation multiple times…
The agent looked at the other with confusion, but Kim Sol-eum simply shrugged his shoulders.
“Anyway, it seems this is as far as I go.”
…!
From beneath the hand pressing on his stomach, blood gushed out.
The bleeding was not being stopped at all.
Kim Sol-eum handed the name tag back into Agent Bronze’s hand.
There was blood smeared on the name tag.
The agent gritted his teeth.
“Even if you are dragged here every new moon night and keep yielding your name tag, that company will never help you.”
“Perhaps so.”
Kim Sol-eum was about to shrug his shoulders again, but although he grimaced slightly due to the pain, he smiled.
“Still, the Disaster Management Bureau will one day end this Dark… that is, the disaster. Then I will be completely free too.”
“……!!”
The agent stared at Kim Sol-eum like someone who had been struck a blow.
“Go on, you two. It could be dangerous if you keep looking back like this.”
Kim Sol-eum raised his head and illuminated the outside of the classroom with his emergency flashlight, which was still working.
“While you go, I will watch the front as much as possible.”
“…….”
“Um, and since Mr. Bison is a rookie and hasn’t really done anything wrong, I’d appreciate it if you could travel together safely for at least a while.”
“Mr. Roe…”
The agent conflicted.
But in the end, he gritted his teeth, turned around, and walked holding his flashlight.
“Follow me.”
“Ah…”
Jang Heo-un agonized, but finally made up his mind.
‘Even if I stay by his side, there’s nothing I can do…’
Perhaps disappearing quickly would actually be easier for Kim Sol-eum.
But since he couldn’t just leave, he secretly slipped something into Kim Sol-eum’s coat.
“Mr. Roe, this… is my spare name tag.”
…!
“Since I survived longer thanks to you… and I have no one else to save. It might be insufficient, but please take this… thank you.”
And before even listening to an answer, he left, following the agent.
Unable to bring himself to look back.
“…….”
As promised, Kim Sol-eum watched the agent and Jang Heo-un leave for a moment.
And…
‘Success!’
As soon as they turned the corner and vanished, he hurriedly pulled out the item he had prepared from his pocket.
A single large jawbreaker candy wrapped in a small vinyl pack.
Those warm days,
the magic candy!
An old-fashioned red, yellow, and white jawbreaker candy sat large inside that friendly packaging.
Nostalgia Candy
The emergency recovery medicine that Kim Sol-eum had purchased.
He unwrapped it with blood-stained hands, he popped one into his mouth and began to roll it around.
Then, a change began to occur.
…!
The wounds on his body closed.
The spilled blood was reabsorbed, and the broken bones naturally connected back to their original form.
As if time were rewinding.
While rolling the candy in the mouth,
revived memories of the past!
While the jawbreaker candy was melting in the mouth, it fixed the user’s state to their healthiest physical and mental condition over the past ten years.
‘Since it’s a dream anyway, this temporary measure is enough.’
His condition improved crazily, and his mind cleared up.
His brain worked dynamically.
‘I succeeded…!’
Kim Sol-eum let out a sigh of relief.
His intended move had worked perfectly.
The most effective method that could be used in this kind of situation.
‘Naturally, it’s retirement by faking death.’
He had barely snatched the opportunity to target both the freedom of exploration and the restoration of his image simultaneously.
‘I was so nervous that I might miss the timing of the emergency flashlight going out.’
He dusted himself off, stood up, and let out another huge sigh of relief.
His heart was pounding so hard.
Lightheartedness and fear.
‘…Alright.’
Now I know what to do.
Standing up, Kim Sol-eum checked the tattoo that had reappeared, and pulled out a spare powerful flashlight from within to hold in his hand.
And after a deep breath, he stepped out of the classroom, taking a single step alone into the dark 4th-floor hallway.