I walked.
“A crash happened in the tunnel.”
I kept walking.
“A white Matex compact car. Someone inside the driver’s door is waving. Right there, just behind you.”
Tap, tap.
The sensation of something tapping my right shoulder again and again.
“Turn around.”
A whisper at my ear.
A presence keeping exact pace, right beside me as we walk through the dark tunnel.
Very close.
“It was a hit-and-run accident.”
I kept my eyes forward.
...The broken headlight of the white Matex shines from behind. Because of it, a shadow stretches long in front of me.
Inside the car....
Swish... swish...
A figure waving.
“You saw it, right?”
Cold creeps up my shoulder. My heart pounds. Something is beside me. Something is beside me. Something is—
“Cat-sir. Please start your scary story!”
My heart almost fell out of me.
“Wasn’t that the scary story? Saying someone is next to you when there’s no one there.”
“Ahh. True?”
...!
With a dry mouth, I somehow answered.
“...Yes. Scary story.”
Right.
Never turn back or act alone.
With this many people here, that won’t happen—but honestly admitting something is beside me and begging for help would be idiotic.
Ignore it.
I must suppress the reaction.
I must ignore it naturally.
Which means—
I must pretend it’s part of the scary story.
“Then keep going. There’s someone next to you.”
Ha.
“...It’s probably one of the people who disappeared or died in this tunnel, walking beside us while pretending to be part of the group.”
......
“Right next to me.”
“Why are you saying that? Why are you saying that? Why are you saying that? Why are you why are you why are you—”
A voice, breath, cold exhale, strange smell—right next to my face.
“Dolphin Deputy told us. There was an accident in this tunnel.”
“Oh, right.”
“What accident.”
“A hit-and-run where a compact car carrying a family was struck by a wrong-way driver. The whole family disappeared.”
“Oh, then one of that family is walking beside Cat-sir?”
“...Hard to say. But it seems like it’s pretending to be the one who came with Butterfly Deputy.”
“Heeheehee.”
I barely kept myself from clenching my fists. Cold sweat feels like it should be on my skin, but the reptile body suppresses sweat glands.
“So what’s the ending.”
“When I turn my head, no one is there...”
I deliberately turned sharply toward Baek Saheon.
He flinched.
Thank you. I just bought a little distance from the ghost.
“Good enough, right?”
......
“That was weak.”
“Ha... sorry.”
If something that is actually a ghost weren’t right beside me, I could have told something way better.
Why is it even picking me?!
If it wanted to blend in pretending to be someone from Jin Nasol’s side, why not attach to her?
She wouldn’t even blink!
Do ghosts pick based on personality?! Did it notice I’m a coward?!
It didn’t go for the one who got separated—it came for me—
......
“Alright, since we’ve gone around, I’ll start again—”
“Hold on.”
“Yes?”
I slowly turned my head a little further.
And I glanced at the person walking at the far left end.
“Butterfly Deputy.”
“What.”
“You said earlier that your teammate got scared and ran back.”
“So what.”
“So only two of you entered together?”
“Why would I wait there for someone else? That’s annoying.”
“.......”
“.......”
“So the two of you entered... and then one person disappeared.”
“Yeah?”
“As far as I know... we are not supposed to be alone here.”
Never turn back or move alone.
“But you were alone.”
“.......”
“...And you didn’t try to fix it. You didn’t call out, didn’t try to return, didn’t do anything. You just stood there and waited for the next group to arrive.”
“.......”
“.......”
“Yes. Because I was waiting for the white Matex compact car.”
I froze.
“Because there’s someone in the driver’s seat. They’re waving.
Please. Turn around. You can still see it. The white Matex compact car crashed. There’s someone inside.”
I snapped my head forward.
Do not look left. Do not look right.
Shit.
Shit shit shit!!
I should have stayed ignorant!
Why did I ask! This is exactly like the idiot in horror movies who asks the murderer to confirm whether they’re the murderer!
Yes, you must confirm to act—but also NO, you FOOL!!!
“Ah, so both were ghosts then~”
“Ha.”
I hear a click of the tongue and light, cheerful footsteps.
The place where Jin Nasol had been—something else touches Dolphin Deputy’s shoulder.
Tap, tap.
Alternating with the tapping at my right shoulder.
Tap. Tap.
Tap-tap,
“The crashed car is behind us.”
“If you turn around, you can see the crash. You can learn the tunnel’s secret.”
“Well, can’t be helped~ Let’s just start telling stories again!”
...You can brush it off like THAT?!
There are ghosts on BOTH SIDES telling us to turn around and that’s your reaction???
Just how insane are field exploration people?! You think you can walk out of this?!
No, actually... yes. They can.
“Keep walking!”
And at that moment—
The lights in the tunnel turned on.
Bang—tatatatang.
I almost jumped. But everyone else’s footsteps remain unchanged.
“Oh, visibility’s better. Easier to walk~”
“Yes, well.”
And they just keep walking. No—!
“Then I’ll go again!”
Why did the lights turn on?
And then I realize.
“You can see the crashed car now.”
At the time of the accident, the tunnel was operational—so the lights were on.
“.......”
Krk...
The engine behind us tries to start.
“There was an accident.”
The ruined engine catches, producing a warped roar. The shredded tire screeches against asphalt.
The headlights.
Follow us.
The wrecked car’s lights cast our shadows long ahead.
On my right, something moves.
A human-shaped silhouette claps its hands, dancing like some inflatable tube doll, limbs bent wrong, jerking and swaying.
Tap.
Its arm brushes me.
Clap clap.
Hands clap right at my ear.
Scared. Scared— No. Endure.
“Oh, I’ll tell one more tunnel story. About the car that hit the compact one.”
Please no.
“When you think about it, isn’t it strange?”
Rrrrr... squeal.
“If two cars collided head-on, even if one is small... the other should have suffered damage too. So where’s that damage? Why no trace?”
“.......”
“Maybe it wasn’t another car.”
I swallow.
“Looks like there was another accident.”
The wreck crawls forward behind us.
It slows, then brakes.
Like it’s about to crash into us.
Skree—skree.
At any moment.
“.......”
I’m going insane. I’m actually going insane.
No.
It’s all fake. Ignore it. Keep the scary stories going. Endure.
Rrrrr... skree.
“So maybe it wasn’t a traffic accident. Maybe the compact car met something in here—something ritualistic, or cursed—and the people inside suffered some kind of fate.”
“.......”
“And the disappearances afterward happened because that something learned it liked harming people.”
The headlights are right behind us now.
My neck, my ears are locked from fear.
And then—
“Well, that’s the theory~”
“.......”
I realize the presence beside me is gone.
The weight. The touch. The sound. Gone.
Silence.
I look ahead.
The shadow on my right is gone.
“.......”
“.......”
Hoo.
I didn’t react. I endured.
For the first time, I am grateful for this body that does not show panic.
I survived that.
Now I can actually respond to Dolphin Deputy’s story. Hoo!
“I find it fairly convincing.”
“Right?”
“Yes. There is also the superstition that ghosts act in reverse. So rather than a wrong-way car, perhaps something else was driving the wrong way.”
“That’s right.”
Something lunges right in front of me.
A twisted thing, limbs arranged in a way that mimics a human shape—malicious, wrong—its body hung together in mismatched pieces, its head abnormally large as it moves and exhales...
Right in front of my nose.
Fuck.
I reflexively threw a punch with everything I had.
BANG!!
And a sound came out that should not come from a human fist.
“...??”
Clatter—clatter—clatter—.
I turned my head.
The thing that had taken my punch and flown off was an old, rusted license plate now embedded into the right-side tunnel wall.
Right after, the dented license plate fell away together with a slab of concrete from the wall, revealing what was inside.
“...!”
“Ugh!”
A stone wrapped in old prayer beads.
Shaped almost like a memorial tablet, covered in unreadable but vicious-looking characters, soaked through with what seemed to be the dried blood of some unknown animal, a congealed reddish-brown, radiating an ominous and malevolent presence.
Something someone must have hidden in the tunnel construction and tried to seal away—something that, on sight alone, forces a flood of horrific speculation....
Cr-r-r-rumble....
It was now just stone dust.
More precisely, it had shattered into crumbs on the ground because it got hit by the license plate.
A stone talisman that had taken a blow from a license plate swung with absurd physical force had become just a handful of pebbled scraps....
“.......”
And then.
Tap.
“.......”
“.......”
“Oh, there’s the exit.”
Far ahead, I can see light.
The tunnel exit where dawn light softly spills in.
An exit that shouldn’t be visible yet.
“Oh. The sun hasn’t even risen but it’s already over?”
“.......”
“Wow.”
And then I finally understood the situation.
Physical exorcism....
Section Chief Lee Jahaeon,
Just what kind of life have you been living....
“...So, you’re saying you escaped because you broke the tunnel?”
“Yes!”
Deputy Jin Nasol looks at us with the expression of ‘What in the hell are you talking about.’
For the record, he had also checked the exit around the time we saw it and came out as well. He’s holding one of our group who had lost consciousness.
So that staff member really was trying to run...
Looks like the Elite Team deputy didn’t just let him go. Whew.
And my explanation is....
“We didn’t break the tunnel, a sudden anomalous attack event occurred. While responding, I may have been a bit excessive with my strikes.”
What an insane line.
I can’t believe I just said it myself.
This is the kind of thing a middle-school-edgelord writer would put in a Security Division character’s dialogue in 〈Darkness Exploration Records〉.
Maybe I should’ve done the Section Chief Lee Jahaeon answer: “? Yes.”
But even under Deputy Jin Nasol’s very suspicious stare, the situation did come to a reasonably good conclusion.
“Oh! It’s not a resolved instance. Looks like only an escape.”
Meaning the team that went in after us still hadn’t come out.
Whew.
At least we avoided the report: “A suspicious outsider destroyed a darkness supply site.”
...But that means the tunnel really did “get scared” and let us go because the memorial tablet shattered.
So this is what happens when sufficient physical force is present.
Experiencing it firsthand was honestly astonishing.
I opened and closed my fist, glancing at Baek Saheon. More precisely, at the reflection of my face on his phone’s screen surface.
The sleek snout of a black lizard.
Whew.
“What? What.”
“Nothing.”
...It really is a convenient body.
So that’s why it counts as repayment.
The body of “us” was powerful.
But looked at another way, this let me better estimate the scale of Section Chief Lee Jahaeon’s power.
He is stronger than this.
If Section Chief Lee had struck the tunnel wall with everything he had, like I just did, the result probably wouldn’t have been reddish dust—
The tunnel itself might have collapsed.
He’s a more specialized specimen.
Meaning that lizard form isn’t simply strong because it’s “us.”
If I’m at this level...
Just what role does Section Chief Lee hold within “us” to have power like that? The question flickers through me.
And I realize I need to learn how to actually use physical force properly.
I’ll have to ask.
Though there’s something else on my schedule first.
“Okay then, let’s go eat now!”
“Ah, then....”
And then—
Beep-beep.
Deputy Jin Nasol checks his phone and grimaces at us.
“Stop.”
“Yes?”
“Dolphin, Goat, ...and Cat.”
Eyes behind the butterfly mask sweep across us in turn.
“Director Ho (Board Member) is calling.”
“...??”
“He wants all three of you brought in.”
Excuse me?
“Why?”
“Sigh....”
The sound of Jin Nasol suppressing irritation is plainly audible.
“It’s a project team dinner.”
“...??”