Ten full days had passed since that unprecedented incident—
when out of nowhere, two Black Tortoise 1 Team agents, two Baekilmong employees, and an unidentified supernatural disaster appeared unconscious inside SDRA Headquarters.
Now, the people involved were gathered in a barbecue restaurant.
The place was a little shabby, but clearly a long-established favorite among office workers. The chatter was loud, the atmosphere lively—but at the corner table where they sat, only weary silence hung heavy.
They had only just regained a fragile sense of composure.
“......”
“......”
Ssshhhhh—
Meat hissed on the grill. Three haggard-looking people exchanged words of courtesy.
“Eat plenty.”
“Yes, thank you.”
Agent Choi grabbed a piece of meat straight off the grill and popped it into his mouth.
For someone who hadn’t been able to swallow solid food for an entire week—surviving only on water and liquid diets—it was hard to believe how easily he was eating now.
The same went for Deputy Eunhaje, cracking open a bottle of soju.
“This is the kind of shit you can’t stay sober for.”
“Ehh, come on now. No way a government agency is gonna hand out alcohol. At least the treatment was free, wasn’t it?”
“If I bring up taxes here, does that make me an asshole?”
“Sharp as ever, aren’t you?”
This man had already had his personal information exposed to the SDRA once before, thanks to the agent he met back during the New Employee Orientation ghost story. So even in his grandmother’s disguise, he was picked up as a Baekilmong employee.
After days of interrogation and treatment, he was finally allowed out—on the condition that he accompany the agents.
His gear had been confiscated by the SDRA, but out of “humanitarian” concern, they returned enough equipment to keep his hands from being empty. A gloved hand—so sparks wouldn’t leap out—gripped the tongs and flipped the meat.
“Come on, old man, have some too.”
“......”
Of the group, the one who looked the least battered—Agent Cheongdong, Ryu Jaegwan—accepted a piece of prime Korean beef with a complicated expression.
It wasn’t that he was worried the meal might narrowly violate the anti-graft law. More that he had absolutely no idea how to deal with the situation at hand.
Because the truth was—
All of these people had died, hanging by the neck in nooses in Segwang District, only to awaken again. They had somehow clawed their way back from horrific aftereffects, just enough to function in daily life.
But the nightmares lingered. The bizarre whispers in their ears continued. And only now, ten days later, were they beginning to understand what the hell had happened.
It wasn’t something you could just casually talk about inside the SDRA—Segwang Special City.
“...Intel on ‘that place’ is damn near impossible to collect. You agents find anything?”
“Stick your nose in too deep and you’ll really lose your memories~. Honestly, the way things are now—that’s as good as it gets.”
“This state, huh...”
“The Agency officially designated our condition as contamination. They say we forced our way through a well that hadn’t been safety-tested in ages and got tainted by an unidentifiable supernatural phenomenon.”
In other words: an ambiguous stability.
Roughly translated, the SDRA was chalking it up as another one of Agent Choi’s reckless stunts—“Well, somehow you escaped alive.”
And perhaps that was why, even as a Baekilmong employee, Deputy Eunhaje wasn’t locked in a glass cell right now. He was being tolerated in this strange, reluctant limbo.
Because they’d all gotten tangled up in it together.
“Gotta admit, your troublemaker reputation came in handy this time.”
“Eyy~ things happen when you’re saving civilians. ‘Reckless’ sounds so harsh when you could use a nice word like ‘daring,’ don’t you think?”
“Yeah, yeah. Eat your beef.”
Deputy Eunhaje’s eyes flicked to one side.
No—everyone’s eyes followed.
To the one person at the table who couldn’t eat beef.
“...Next time, let’s make sure you get some.”
Conditional Affirmative.
That would be me.
Codename 130666. A supernatural disaster given form.
A formless mass of flesh beneath a gas mask—unable to put even a single bite of well-seared hanwoo into its mouth.
For the record, the only reason I could even be here at all was because the Black Tortoise 1 Team leader—the Old Man—was using goblin tricks to distort the vision of all the other patrons in the restaurant.
The human body I’d recovered in Segwang Special City? Gone.
It had been a dream from the start.
‘Ha...’
So how was I able to think and act like a person?
‘They worked me over...’
And yes, I’d been lucky.
That sense of relief was strong enough that I could even endure the sorrow of not eating beef.
‘If I remember right... they said it was about three days after everyone else woke up.’
That was when Agent Cheongdong first heard about my condition.
When I’d returned in a state that had completely lost its humanity.
***
“—Did you go see him?”
“...Yes.”
Ryu Jaegang sat in the hospital room, facing his superior.
Of all the survivors, Ryu Jaegang was the one who showed the fastest recovery. Within a few days, he had been granted permission to make visitation requests and was now going around to see people.
Thanks to that, he had just returned from meeting Peregrine, who had barely survived emergency treatment, and only now did he learn that the man’s real name was Eunhaje.
He also learned that Eunhaje could devour an entire LA galbi lunchbox single-handedly without issue.
For someone dripping cold sweat and complaining about the constant sensation of a choking noose around his throat, it was a remarkable display.
And his own superior, Agent Choi, was no different.
“The testimonies are identical. It seems what we experienced... it’s most accurate to classify it as a ‘dream.’”
—Okay, haha.
His superior, however, was in such an abnormal state of contamination that it went beyond simple PTSD reactions. He couldn’t even speak aloud anymore. His neck was wrapped in cloth so that he wouldn’t have to look at it.
Yet, even under absolute bed rest orders, lying flat on his back, his eyes sparkled so fiercely it was as if you could hear his brain turning, constantly scheming.
Thanks to that, the two of them, upon realizing this whole incident had been experienced as a dream, immediately connected it to an old urban legend.
—Do you remember Se-gwang Technical High School, Jaegang?
That it could be connected to a greater, extinction-level-class legend was unthinkable.
‘The mechanism was the same.’
That you could only enter through dreams.
Of course, the two agents had felt an eerie suspicion from the beginning, when listening to the testimonies of Kim Soleum and Eunhaje regarding Se-gwang Special City. That sense of, “This might actually be real.”
But they had also kept doubting, suspecting there was a chance it was fake. And yet, looking at the circumstances now, the problem was—it really did seem true.
The erased Se-gwang Special City.
That sealed, extinction-level disaster zone’s very existence.
...Even if you entered only through dreams, the contamination level upon death was monstrous.
‘Phew.’
But the bigger problem was that his superior wasn’t even the worst case.
Even excluding those still comatose.
...Now, with uncharacteristic hesitation, his superior scribbled a note to ask—
—How’s Grape?
“......”
Ryu Jaegang’s expression darkened.
In Se-gwang Special City, Kim Soleum had seemed completely intact, as if it were all a lie. But in truth...
—That entity needs to be transferred elsewhere.
He had been formally classified as a supernatural disaster.
Attempts by Disaster Management Bureau officials to communicate with him had failed. He did nothing but repeatedly demand to be sent back to Baekilmong.
He had not yet shown aggression, but the Bureau judged that if his requests continued to be delayed, no one knew what might happen.
—You did try purification based on the premise that he’s originally human, right?
“...Yes.”
Ryu Jaegang’s voice sank.
“But only some anxiety symptoms improved. There was no other progress.”
“......”
None of the Bureau’s purification methods at headquarters had succeeded in stripping the supernatural disaster’s influence from Kim Soleum and returning him to being human.
...For three days, absolutely nothing.
Leaving Agent Choi’s room, walking down the corridor, Ryu Jaegang’s thoughts sank with growing unease.
‘If that’s the case...’
...Maybe now he really had to say it.
That strange entity—was originally Agent Grape.
It wasn’t just a matter of bad timing that he hadn’t reported it yet. He had been weighing the complexity of Kim Soleum’s situation.
Turning a former employee they had once infiltrated into Baekilmong as an SDRA agent into a supernatural being—and still using him as an “employee.”
The moment he reported this, the matter would inevitably rise up to higher levels.
‘And then... who knows what treatment Agent Grape would face.’
The Bureau was already an institution accustomed to choosing the lesser evil.
Like a selection of villains.
“......”
But maybe now that was exactly what was needed.
A harsher, more specialized method of purification.
‘Maybe I should have reported it from the very beginning.’
For the Bureau’s greater principles, that may have been the right course. Ryu Jaegang’s mind swirled with hallucinations of the noose tightening as his thoughts drowned in confusion.
“Oh, Jaegang. Visiting?”
“...!”
From down the corridor, a tall middle-aged woman raised a hand.
Ryu Jaegang’s eyes widened.
“Agent Haegeum.”
The leader of Black Tortoise Team 3.
The agent, sword of Fourfold Catastrophe at her hip, looked weary from just finishing a deployment, but her expression was still bright, flashing a vigorous smile.
“I heard about it. Tried to draw water from a well and blacked out, didn’t you?”
“......”
“Choi’s given you a lot of trouble too, huh?”
Though this case was somewhat different, he couldn’t bring himself to deny it.
“I heard Baekilmong employees were involved too. Is that true?”
“...Yes.”
“Hm.”
She tossed the words out casually.
“I recognized one of their faces.”
“...What?”
“Well, maybe not a face, exactly... he had a gas mask on.”
“...!!”
“Yeah. The one with horns, and smoke rising from the gas mask. That guy. He’s Security Team staff, right? Looks like Baekilmong finally figured out how to wield supernatural disasters.”
How does she know?
Ryu Jaegang’s mind was plunging back into chaos, when Agent Haegeum tilted her head.
“I should go pay him a visit.”
“Why...?”
“I’ve got something to give him.”
And from there, astonishing events began to unfold.
Agent Haegeum’s visit.
Regarding the entity—within the supernatural disaster designated “Amusement Park of Delight,” she identified it as the so-called “Flower Golden Mascot.”
She testified that she had encountered it in the field, and proposed an item that could improve its condition.
Permission was granted to bring in Jade Bells.
But the attempt ended in abject failure.
Jade Bells destroyed.
Five bells in total, disintegrating to nothing every 182 minutes on average, yet no improvement in the subject’s condition was observed.
This continued for two days.
Failure, failure, failure—until Agent Haegeum argued that the very act of breaking the bells was significant, and persuaded them to escalate to stronger tools of the same kind.
Permission granted for the Great Jade Bell of Yeongseon.
Treatment was carried out by leaning the subject against a ritual board and letting them hear the toll of the great bell ringing in Jinsi.
No doubt the intent was also to avoid wasting countless bells.
And if this didn’t work, harsher measures were almost certain to follow.
But, astonishingly...
Change occurred.
The subject began asking after the safety of those who had shared the well.
“...!”
Rational communication was restored.
The subject’s method of communication remained the same—letters written in black smoke—but now interpersonal exchange flowed smoothly.
Afterward, bells were prescribed to maintain the condition.
Ryu Jaegang eventually sought out Agent Haegeum directly, demanding answers.
—How did you do it??
—Let’s just say your whole basic premise was wrong.
And she said nothing more.
...Afterward, the Bureau reclassified the supernatural disaster as a phenomenon, and began exploring the possibility of using it as a cooperative familiar.
Thus, Ryu Jaegang reached a terrifying inference. Based on one fact—
That the Jade Bells were never meant for human purification.
The same was true for the Great Jade Bell.
Yes, they had some effect in purification. But their true function was simply to steady the mind and help one regain a sense of self.
Meaning...
Agent Haegeum had approached the subject on the assumption it was not human from the start.
And that was why it worked.
“......”
Ryu Jaegang swallowed the thought.
Just a baseless guess.
Let’s just be thankful Agent Grape has regained his senses.
He buried the inference, never reporting it to Agent Choi.
And several days passed. The well survivors steadily recovered, passed Bureau safety evaluations...
And so, a long-overdue, weary salaryman’s barbecue dinner was conditionally permitted.
***
I avoided the gaze of Agent Cheongdong, who seemed to be glancing between the meat and me.
Seriously, don’t misunderstand. I really can’t eat it....
“...Did you receive enough bells?”
[Affirmative:]
Total: 7 units.
“I see.”
Fortunately, after that, the stares eased up. From Agent Cheongdong, and the others as well.
They still drew me into conversation, while happily eating their meat. Envious—no, good for them.
As the alcohol and food took effect, the mood inevitably softened.
Here, the same thing was happening.
In the restaurant, quieter now in the after-dinner lull, those who had recovered some energy finally moved on to the most important topic.
That was—
Subject: The whereabouts of Dolphin.
The biggest problem at present.
“Yeah. Seriously... why isn’t Deputy Lee Seonghae waking up?”
“......”
“It’s been fifteen days already.”
That’s right.
Only Deputy Lee Seonghae still lay comatose in the Bureau’s protection ward.
Of course, I had explained what I had done, but...
“That only makes it stranger. He escaped, cleared it, he should’ve woken up—but he hasn’t.”
......
My hands clenched.
‘I shouldn’t have done it.’
Failing to grasp the situation properly, I’d pushed Deputy Lee Seonghae into trouble. My throat was dry.
Even without a mouth.
In fact, even if he had died of dehydration, he should have long since woken from the dream. The fact that he hadn’t meant the train wasn’t the escape method.
Concern: He may still be alive in that place.
Condition: Completely contaminated.
“......”
Exactly.
The fear that he had become fully assimilated into the legend, transformed into one of its residents.
And if rescue came too late... then in Baekilmong, disasters unique to dreams could occur.
Potential risk: Dolphin employee’s points reset.
“...!!”
“What do you mean, points reset?”
“If someone’s missing for about a month, we consider them dead and file dismissal paperwork. In government terms, I guess it’d be called voluntary resignation.”
Deputy Eunhaje gestured with his hand.
“And all the points they scraped together like dogs for a wish ticket? Reset to zero.”
“...!!”
“All of it, completely wasted.”
Phew.
“Well, I hear you agents don’t believe in wish tickets anyway... but for us, it’s a nightmare scenario.”
“......”
Agent Choi did not offer agreement.
But he did declare this much:
“Either way, that means a rescue mission is needed. That’s our specialty.”
However—
“Civil servant, no matter how prepared you are, you don’t know what’ll happen in there. Don’t be so quick to declare things.”
......
He wasn’t wrong.
That noose, even—we had no way to overcome it. Most of the equipment was useless in there.
‘Difficult.’
Unless the person was strong enough to survive hanging by the noose itself...
Wait.
‘But what if someone could physically rip it apart?’
And I knew of just such a person. Someone who could smash through ropes and trees alike.
From the Records of Dark Exploration—a Physical Exorcism Agent.
Recommended Candidate.
“Oh?”
Recommendation:
Field Exploration Team D — Section Chief Lizard.
“...?!”