……
[Can you hear me?]
I can hear it.
Braun’s voice.
Classic, cheerful, and with a distinctive accent.
[My heartfelt advice is already prepared, but no matter how good the advice is, it’s meaningless if you’re not ready to listen to it.]
[So, first, I need to properly introduce you to your current situation, Mr. Roe Deer.]
…Introduce my situation to me?
I held the receiver, and gradually fell into a strange sense of immersion, as if the conversation was spreading beyond hearing to all five senses…
…[Can you see it?]
Ah.
I can see it.
[Oh, good! Then, let me introduce it! Roe Deer’s Great Adventures, Resort Arc!]
A classic band sound and applause as the curtain rises.
That’s…
‘Me.’
As if rewinding a sitcom, my days from the very first day I entered Cheerful Theme Park begin playing before my eyes.
Me, waking up in the resort facilities office wearing a Security Team uniform.
[What a fun costume! Isn’t it rather nice? A beast restrained by a belt, so typical of horror and allure. But it’s not bad. Not bad at all…]
Ding-dong! Ding-dong! Ding-dong! Ding-dong!
With cheerful sound effects, the things I did are edited and pass by in quick succession.
[That was the moment you became the owner of this resort. Hmm, the mascot’s deformed style looks a little childish… but it’s fine. This is a theme park, after all!]
[Yellow bowties for all employees? Oh my! It would’ve been better to just put mascot suits on all of them! Good heavens!]
Laughter.
[Goodness, giving out gifts and free spa services too? That’s a promotion so outrageous all the world’s gloomy souls would come running! Well, unless the resort goes bankrupt first, of course!]
Scenes flash by rapidly, edited for speed.
Braun’s cheerful commentary turns my desperate survival story into something like a fun and successful resort management tale.
[The dead staff rise up and start working again! Thus, Mr. Roe Deer learns another valuable mascot lesson.]
[‘You can’t fix a person, but you can fix an employee’!]
I felt strange.
‘…Did I really do all that?’
It was an odd feeling.
After all, true immersion is when you get absorbed in something that’s not your own experience.
In other words… it’s based on distance.
So, the yellow mascot’s actions in the flashback felt like something to be evaluated, not relived.
[And another! Someone unsuited to the dignity of the resort is thrown out the lobby doors once again!]
At some point during the past few days, I’d started endlessly adding new guest and staff rules, gradually becoming the resort’s powerful and fearsome manager.
A typical Cheerful Theme Park mascot.
That… that’s…
[Look at your rigorous guest selection process!]
The more successful the resort became, the more powerful I grew.
As the resort expanded, brought in more guests, earned better reviews, and made more profit, I began to judge management policy not by safety, but by the presence or absence of discomfort.
‘Wait a second.’
A feeling of wrongness slowly crept in.
And then… the scene finally reached the moment I changed ‘bodies’.
In the flashback, I naturally transfered my consciousness into a standard mascot to deal with the chaos inside the resort, when Supervisor Lee Seonghae killed Ladybug.
…Seeing it this way, it really was a perspective and ability that was no longer human.
[This is the scene. Here’s my first piece of advice for you, Mr. Roe Deer.]
[Let’s focus on this moment. But…]
With a tape rewind sound, the scene rewinds.
[It’ll be fun to watch it from a different angle this time.]
My consciousness, which had moved into a standard mascot, and what was left behind. My body.
The yellow mascot standing at the gate to the blue zone stands still for a moment, then soon begins handing out balloons and greeting guests at the gate.
Just like the standard mascots.
‘…!’
Thank goodness. It was right there the whole time.
Since it was next to the blue zone gate, it shouldn’t have been harmed or gone missing.
…Although I was immediately struck by horror at the thought that my own body could be treated like a standard mascot.
Anyway, an overwhelming sense of relief washed over me for a moment.
Now I just have to retrieve my body and quickly perform the ceremony!
T h a n k Y —
[Shh! Let’s enjoy just a little more.]
But the ‘advice’ wasn’t over.
[Now then… here it comes. Oh, what a foul and rude intruder!]
It’s dizzying.
The flashback fast-forwards again, soon leading to the recent rampage of Magic Bunny’s crazy gate attack.
The missing people, driven insane by torture from the red mascot, wail and beg and die as lunatics.
It was a hellish scene.
[A surprise attack! What an electrifying event that ratchets up the tension. Oh! Your response is great, too!]
One by one, countless missing people who were once ordinary become terrifying monsters, shouting for the red mascot, being killed like a joke, and rising again as red mascots.
And in the scene, the yellow mascot—filled with rage—threatened by throwing the corpse of the red mascot back through the gate.
From the black shadow of the mascot whose territory had been invaded, strange golden branches bulged out and then disappeared…
……
Wait a minute.
Rage?
Instead of feeling devastated or terrified by what happened, what came first was the anger of having my territory invaded?
I was going to punish the intruders?
S t r a n g e
That’s really how it was.
A chilling sensation crawled up my back.
In the end, I came to a conclusion about the evaluation of my own actions…
—Thoroughly contaminated.
As the yellow mascot, I had already become thoroughly assimilated into this resort.
Under the pretense of acting for the sake of escape, I was doing everything I could to make the resort more successful and expand it.
And the principles of the resort, which I had originally created for safety, had ended up dominating me, enforcing etiquette and dignity above all else.
…The means and the ends had been reversed.
S t r a n g e
I flailed my arms, and then realized.
Why do I still have my right arm?
This was already my fifth day here.
So why was my right arm still moving without any problem?
The dokkaebi flame that mimicked my right arm should be recharged every three days, yet there’s been no reaction.
Even my original body, which I’d left near the blue zone gate, still had its right arm intact. I, I…
I had reached a point where I could move my right arm just by having the form of a mascot suit.
A cold realization ran down my spine.
‘Just how much have I been consumed by the mascot?’
It wasn’t simply a matter of how long I’d been a mascot, but rather, the more successfully the resort was operated, the deeper this consumption became…
[That’s right. You were far too devoted to your role as the mascot of this resort. And…]
[It’s already too late.]
[You can’t quit on your own anymore. You are now a member of the Cheerful Theme Park.]
My hands trembled.
[You even personally drove out your meddlesome predecessor just now. The resort is now completely yours!]
Then…
C a n ’ t
E s c a p e ?