Train Shelter, Car 8.
Strangely enough, the moment I unscrewed the Daydream Potion cap disguised as a wall screw, I froze, staring at the note that came out from inside it.
Strictly speaking, at the name of the person listed as the “author.”
...Lee Kangheon?
-K.LEE: This is Deputy Lee Kangheon from Team C lol
That was Agent Choi’s cover identity.
Strictly speaking, the employee identity they stole to dig up information inside Daydream Inc.!
Then...
Are you telling me this note was left by the very employee whose identity was stolen?
Hold on.
I hurried through the text.
You’re probably reading this in the clown-show aftermath where YuKwae Research Laboratory’s experiment failed and high-grade darkness is popping like fireworks, right?
This is talking about Se-gwang Special City!
(If you read the sentence ↑ above and don’t know what it means, just skip to the last line, put the screw back in, and walk away lol)
From here on out, here’s a pro tip lol
I know it’s hard just to stay alive when things are this insane,
but there is a way to scrap this darkness entirely.
I sucked in a breath.
The answer is Daydream Inc.
What?
Fundamentally, Daydream backstabbed the Laboratory and that’s how it all turned into this mess. It’s a hell of a company, anyway....
Do you want to clean this up?
Without meaning to, my eyes dropped, hungry for the next line.
Then steal back the dream-cultivator that Daydream Inc. copied, somehow—
“...!!”
—and install it inside a YuKwae Research Laboratory facility that still remains.
If you found this note, odds are high you’re a company employee, so you can at least try.
Sorry, but I can’t.
Good luck!
—Lee Kangheon
That was the end of the note.
What kind of deranged nonsense is this.
As if he’d dumped blunt, preposterous intel straight into the reader’s skull hard enough to make the back of your head ache.
Daydream?
Reflexively, I recalled it.
The dream cultivation chamber I’d discovered outside Se-gwang Special City.
The desperate scrawl that smeared through the research notes next to the prototype dream-phase device in that place.
—I was tricked I was tricked I was tricked I was tricked I was tricked I was tricked I was tricked I was tricked I was tricked
Even by circumstances alone, the pieces mesh like a puzzle.
Daydream is not only using YuKwae Research Laboratory’s research and potions wholesale; there’s even a ghost story in their main building’s basement where the Laboratory’s past appears.
...And one of the classic origins for a ghost story jumps straight to mind.
Grudge.
YuKwae Research Laboratory went through something that would seed a bone-deep grudge against Daydream.
...And on top of that.
The research notes that sat beside the broken dream-cultivator where I woke up after drinking the wish ticket.
Daydream found out—they stormed in—it was another trick—before they could steal your Name we smuggled it out and hid it in the most crowded place
Another trick.
That phrasing means they’d already fallen for it before.
What the hell has this insane pharmaceutical company been doing.
In a ghost-story world, a pharma company that grinds up its own staff being stained with a hideous founding legend hardly even surprises me.
And then there’s this:
...Steal Daydream’s dream-phase device and mount it onto a YuKwae Research Laboratory facility?
In context—and given where this was found—doesn’t it sound like doing that would bring an end to the extinction-class disaster in Se-gwang Special City?
“......”
I quickly looked around me.
I was alone in Car 8, but surely a lot of Se-gwang survivors must have used this car.
If he installed this screw with that in mind...
He must have left it so any Daydream Inc. employee among the survivors would see it.
And I’m the one who pulled it free.
“......”
[You look troubled. Friend, this is Brown, and I’m always ready to listen. A witty bit of counsel comes free of charge.]
Troubled... not exactly.
My thoughts had wandered sideways into something that only made me more unsettled.
If this note is telling the truth, there’s a fact you can infer in reverse.
If reinstalling the dream-cultivator resolves the crisis—
...then it means the dream-cultivator going wrong is what turned Se-gwang Special City into this in the first place.
[Ho!]
And Daydream is now happily using that dream-cultivator to blow their company up into an empire.
A chilling red flag.
And I know the subtitle of this wiki’s world.
No... the real title, actually.
[Prophecy of the End: Dark Exploration Record]
“......”
I’m going to lose it.
I forced back a sigh and folded the note.
My head throbbed, and my mood curdled.
I can’t tell how far I’m supposed to take this line of thought.
This suspicious note. The future. What I’m supposed to do.
I turned onto my side and lay down.
Sleep first.
And the last thing I thought before drifting off:
...separate from the contents of the note, something else was snagging at me.
They feel similar.
The self-proclaimed “Lee Kangheon” on the note sounds a lot like Agent Choi.
I almost compared the handwriting on reflex. But even from memory, Agent Choi’s hand was clearly different.
The note looks a lot messier, at least.
And thinking about it, the composition doesn’t make narrative sense.
If Agent Choi even worked at Daydream, that would be a full-blown Mary Sue background.
A flagship named character of the early Disaster Management Bureau somehow having a backstory where they also worked at Daydream.
In a multi-contributor wiki, that format barely survives; even if it exists, it never lasts long.
Someone will find a way to kill it or retcon it out in the middle.
At least, during the era of Dark Exploration Record that included Agent Choi—so, before Nameless Shining Church really swelled its power inside the wiki—that’s how it was.
This was separate from the problem of the parts of the wiki I couldn’t remember.
This was a problem of plausibility.
...Hoo.
Maybe it’s just a Daydream employee trapped in Se-gwang about to die a stupid death, pissed off enough to scatter bait-text.
But the way it read—like the writer knew every contour of the situation—kept snagging at me.
Which is probably why I even started fixating on the tone.
...Sleep.
When I get out, I’ll just show this note to Agent Choi once.
I shut my eyes again and pulled the tattered blanket over my head.
And amid a thousand worries, doubts, and thoughts running wild, fatigue and weariness finally dragged me under.
***
“Are you awake?”
“...Hello.”
I opened my eyes five hours later.
It was edging toward noon, but the train interior lights stayed on so relentlessly that day and night were almost impossible to tell apart.
“So some cars do cover the fixtures during sleep hours.”
Ko Yeongeun’s aunt—the one everyone called the Station Attendant—raised a hand in greeting when she saw me stepping out into Car 7, and we traded a few short words.
About Deputy Eun Haje and the Bronze Agent’s condition, too.
“They were accepted without incident.”
Thank goodness.
I let out a breath of relief.
...Good thing I set up that store in Afternoon Station.
Promising that the two of them could draw provisions regularly from that store seems to have played as a very strong card in the negotiation.
The Happy Maker I brought as a bribe must have done its part, too.
Powerful painkillers are welcome anywhere.
I also thought back to the Delusion Home Shopping items I’d scrimped and scraped together with the “Home Shopping Survival prize money,” leaving at least a little unspent.
Of course, no matter how good a bribe is, it only buys a moment, and I’m a little worried about future territorial hazing.
Still, with Deputy Eun Haje—ever the former journalist—skilled at slipping into small societies, it was a relief.
“From now on, the two of them will live next to the place Yeongeun received. Car 6. It’ll be a bit cramped, though.”
“...Thank you.”
“It’s best to help if we can live by helping. This place was made that way to begin with.”
She said it matter-of-factly, but she looked tired.
For the record, I also asked whether any survivor who’d stayed in Car 8 matched a man in a suit with an animal mask.
“Those kinds of... people—you’re the first.”
“I—I see....”
And that was that.
Looks like there’s no way to use that to pick out the “Lee Kangheon” who left the note.
The Station Attendant sighed.
“It’s not for nothing that the people up front are wary of you. Well, they’ve been showing this weird sense of chosenness lately.... ”
“...Do the people in the front cars and the back cars differ that much in temperament?”
“When a disaster like this hits, people tend to pick one of two paths.”
She shrugged.
“They either get ferociously exclusionary and sink into group egoism, or they go rabidly aggressive about hauling in supplies.”
“......”
“You can say the Train Shelter split in two. Maybe hang around Car 8 a bit longer, get people used to you, then try striking up a conversation?”
“...I appreciate the offer, but that’ll be hard right now.”
I lifted my head at the stop announcement.
The next stop is Noon, Noon Station....
“I’m getting off here.”
I don’t know how you sleep again inside a dream, but I definitely felt clearer after sleeping.
I can move again now.
And whether the note is true or not, whatever Daydream did, my job doesn’t change.
Explore the station.
Gather information and traces.
...And this station—I can handle it alone.
But when she heard I planned to get off at this stop, the Station Attendant’s face stiffened.
“...It’ll be dangerous. Noon Station might sound pleasant by name, but it’s not that kind of place. A lot more people fear it than Afternoon Station.”
“It’s all right. I’ve heard the gist of it. Even so, someone has to go.”
“Hoo....”
Her expression soured, but she didn’t try to stop me. In the middle of a disaster like this, that kind of thing becomes familiar.
“How about saying goodbye to Yeongeun and your companions, then heading out at the next stop?”
“...No. It’s fine.”
We’d just been accepted into the Train Shelter; there’s nothing good about showing myself immediately chatting up outsiders.
I gave a faint smile and shook my head.
“I already said my goodbyes yesterday.”
“...All right.”
She nodded.
The doors are opening.
I stepped out through the door the Station Attendant unlocked, into the space outside the train.
Just like the previous stop, I saw a clean, modern subway platform.
Se-gwang Transit Authority
Noon Station
“......”
I started walking the platform.
Recalling the long-since updated wiki entry.
Noon Station (Nap Shelter)
A subway station located in the center of Se-gwang Special City’s residential zones.
The mecca of commuting, with a neighborhood of many kinds of homes: station-area apartments, studio towers, townhouse complexes, and villas.
On the day of disaster, countless people returned here, praying that they could go home, meet their families, and live the same daily life as before.
Every last one failed.
Frustrated wishes, screams, and tears pooled in Noon Station, swallowed countless homes, and built a nap shelter.
Those who set foot here will be welcomed as if home.
And they will rest.
All of them.
“......”
So in short, this station sits where Se-gwang Special City’s residential district used to be.
And it has a ghost-story gimmick suited to that.
“Phew.”
Alone, I climbed the stairs from the platform toward the concourse....
Sunlight was spilling in at the far end.
“...!”
...A wide-open space spread before me.
A sight you’d never believe was inside a concourse.
Under a blazing, cloudless sky, a neighborhood of walls and small buildings sprawled.
Fresh green garden trees, the smell of lunchtime drifting in from houses beyond their walls. A clear, warm scene.
It wasn’t a brand-new apartment complex of a new town. It felt like some dear old neighborhood that hadn’t been redeveloped, where single-family houses remained.
...But that wasn’t what made me freeze.
“Where even are we!”
“Deputy Lee, did you touch something? Did you mess up whatever you were handling earlier?”
“No! I haven’t even laid a hand on any darkness-related items!”
“This isn’t inside the darkness, is it? It looks way too normal.”
“Call Security first!”
People.
Dozens of people, all talking over one another, stood beyond the wall near the platform stairs, craning around.
Every one of them wore a white coat, more than half had employee IDs on lanyards....
And some of them were faces I knew.
One of them in particular.
“Section Chief Gwak, were you—were you doing something just now...?”
“Hm? I was stepping out for a consult. Why, you think I chucked the entire research staff into the darkness for human experiments? Hahaha!”
“R-Right?! Hah, it’s not like we’re a cleanup team or anything—you wouldn’t....”
...It was Gwak Jegang.
These people are all Daydream Inc.’s research team...!
What the hell is this insane situation.
My eyes nearly popped out.
Why are Daydream people—not even a field exploration team but the research team—down here in the bowels of Se-gwang Special City?
Dozens of them, bare to the highest-grade darkness the Bureau has sealed...!
At that moment—
“...!!”
One of the researchers scanning beyond the wall spotted me.
I tried to duck back on reflex, but I knew it was too late.
The research team pointed at me.
More precisely—at my suit, and... the animal mask.
“F-Field Exploration Team??”
I’m going to lose it.