Out of nowhere, I ran into dozens of Daydream researchers in a Se-gwang Special City subway station.
And then our eyes met—this insane reality.
Damn.
My hand went to my face on reflex.
Hanging there, as always, was the antlered mask bristling like branches.
Which meant I was dressed exactly the way I’d been while working as Noru.
Shit...!
There would definitely be a researcher who recognized me.
I didn’t enter Se-gwang Special City in the alien lizard body in case it caused trouble.
Even though that strength might have helped, I’d given it up for safety. It might affect my sleeping mind.
And instead I had to run into this mental-health-wrecking ambush.
“What?”
“Field Exploration Team?”
The instant the researchers began craning their necks over the wall toward me, following the voice of the one pointing—
...Wait.
I turned and swapped masks.
From Noru to feline.
To the mask of the new identity I’d received.
“......Huh?”
The researcher who’d pointed at me stared blankly, then shouted.
“Uh—uh? W-Wait. That on-site employee... the mask just changed!”
“Huh?”
“No, I definitely saw it, like this... antlers. Hey! You! You just swapped masks, didn’t you!”
“I don’t know what you mean....”
“N-No, I saw it!”
“Could it be a hallucination?”
“Hallucination?”
“So it is darkness, damn it!”
With nothing but testimony to go on, their attention zipped away from the Field Exploration Team and back to their immediate situation.
The researcher who’d pointed at me still stared as if he ✧ NоvеIight ✧ (Original source) couldn’t accept it, but I ignored him for now.
“Excuse me, what kind of darkness is this, exactly? And who are you?”
Hoo.
“Truth is, I don’t know either.”
“...!”
“Strictly speaking, I’ve been trapped here so long I can’t even answer who I am.”
Still—the best chance to keep them alive was probably this.
I spoke seriously.
“But I remember one thing for certain. This place is dangerous. Go down there.”
“Huh?”
I pointed to the stairs I’d come up.
“...The subway?”
“Yes. Go down this way and board the train. Then you can at least secure a minimum of saf—”
“Ah, yes, yes.”
Tch—the way one researcher ran his eyes up and down me, then cut me off.
“No, I mean, thanks for the story but....”
“Don’t tell me you believe some long-missing contaminated vagrant in a place like this.”
“Ah~”
“Keep your distance. Don’t provoke him, either. That’s the best manual.”
Don’t even talk to him—pulling people away from me, they talked among themselves.
But then, picking up the gravity of the situation, their tone grew steadily more urgent behind me.
“Security won’t answer!”
“H-Hold up. Won’t answer?”
“That’s impossible. Those beacons work in any darkness by design....”
“No way that expensive thing just doesn’t connect.”
Finally, one researcher who’d been pacing the crowd in a panic started pressing for blame.
I saw the glossy-coated employee ID at his chest.
Research Team 2
Team Leader Choi Myeongjin
Even a team leader was here.
It was a name I’d seen more than once in Dark Exploration Record. True to a corrupt pharma exec, he’d faithfully reenacted the cliché of cutting costs until accidents happened.
But apparently that wasn’t his role today.
“Section Chief Gwak. Was this your doing?”
“Huh?”
“If you’re not the one who staffed something this insane, who would be!”
“Hahaha, what are you saying, Team Leader Choi.”
Gwak Jegang gave a thin smile.
“Other than all of us being in the annex’s research wing, there’s no commonality here—why come after me? Honestly, you sound more like a politician than a researcher....”
“W-What?”
“Come to think of it—anyone recognize this darkness? If there’s trouble with one of the darknesses our company holds, all we need is to identify which one, deduce the nature, and we’re done, aren’t we?”
“Ah!”
And then—every ghost story with a residential backdrop started pouring out of the researchers’ mouths.
The Woman at the Corner, the Marble Alley, the Playground Beyond, the Streetlamp Shadow-Game....
And bit by bit... they not only shrugged off panic, they let the tension go slack.
[Oh, they are positively careless.]
Right.
As long as we figure out which ghost story it is, we can follow the manual, right? Easy, then.
That seemed to be the line of thought.
Arrogance.
They always shoved Field Exploration Teams or civilians into the darkness from the safety of their desks.
If even those laypeople did it, surely those who know ghost stories can go in, follow the manual, and come out—an unconscious white-collar supremacist logic.
...Hoo.
I’ll say it just once more.
“Everyone—at minimum, have this conversation on the platform—”
“Yes, yes. Understood. Let’s keep it brief. We heard you. And... we won’t stop you from following our lead and escaping if you can.”
Then that little smirk.
“Looks like no one here knows you—must be from the branch office... An on-site employee shouldn’t be trying to lecture researchers.”
“......”
[Friend, do you want me to teach them a lesson?]
No... leave it.
I simply followed as the researchers moved off together.
Partly because I’d spotted something off in the group.
Those two.
Amid the ones talking loudly, two people stood a little apart, by themselves.
Strangely subdued, with pale faces.
...That.
And I recognized their dress.
The project afterparty.
It was exactly how they’d looked at Director Ho’s group dinner to celebrate project outcomes.
Most people wore masks, but there had been a table where the masks lacked the cognitive-suppression effect of the Field Exploration Team’s masks.
So that was the researchers’ table....
Right. In hindsight, obvious.
To force this project to succeed, Ho Yu-won had even roped in Bureau agents; he wouldn’t have staffed it with only Field Exploration Teams.
Of course he recruited a research team, too, to study methods of entry into the sealed extinction-class disaster.
And now those people had surfaced in the heart of Se-gwang Special City.
Hoo.
With a bad feeling rising, I finally met the two people’s eyes.
“...!”
As expected—they recognized me. They’d seen this mask at the dinner.
So I shaped my lips slowly.
Like this:
Director Ho project.
“...!!”
Report.
“......”
Pale and stricken, they glanced at each other—and one of them began moving their lips, urgent and silent.
From that movement, I read the letters....
accidentduringentrymethoddevelopment....
Accident during entry-method development.
...!
Hold on.
I stared at it with the feeling of taking a club to the head. In other words—
...Director Ho has been continually developing alternate methods of entering Se-gwang Special City!
Right. In a way, that was a given.
The Daydream director presumed to be Ho Yu-won had, even in the wiki, obsessed over forcing his way into Se-gwang Special City by every method.
We’d succeeded with entry via the well, but that method limited what could be brought out, so it wouldn’t be strange if they kept trying other approaches now.
So is this... success?
No.
If it were success, those researchers wouldn’t look that pale. Which means this situation is the result of failure.
They’d come along with the nearby research staff, and judging by those faces....
They’re missing.
They transmitted one-way into Se-gwang Special City.
With no exit.
“......”
Meanwhile, the other researcher, glancing around in a panic, shaped his lips too.
Please tell us how to get out please
I barely needed to “interpret.”
They’d already realized this was an extinction-class supernatural disaster, and that’s why they were still chalk-white.
The chill lifted my hair on end.
Hold on, so....
Those researchers—all of them.
With their literal bodies, got swept in and dumped here?
Dozens of Daydream researchers trapped... in the underground of Se-gwang Special City?
In this station?
“Hoo, we’ve narrowed down the possibilities.”
While that went on, the researchers concluded their huddle and stared at a list of darknesses they’d compiled.
“Then it’s one of these three, so we’ll....”
“Myeongjin!”
Team Leader Choi Myeongjin of Research Team 2 snapped his head up at the shout and almost looked toward where it came from, then stopped under the hands of those around him.
“Team leader?”
“Did you hear that?”
“Yes! This must be a darkness where entities mimic relatives.”
“Right! It must be luring us over.”
“Ah... ah.”
The team leader nodded.
“Good. We can use this as a hint to identify the darkness. Narrow it down. Maybe we can even get some good data out of this. Think of it as experience, everyone....”
But—
“Myeongjin, get out now!”
Screee.
A door in the neighborhood swung open.
Inside, a middle-aged woman with a frantic face shuffled her feet in place.
“Go to work now! Why are you at home—go somewhere else right now!”
Not a lure, but a desperate refusal.
“......”
“...Ignore it, and quietly relocate elsewhere.”
“Huh? Yes.”
But a few of the researchers, unable to restrain their curiosity, observed the “entity” that had appeared from the neighborhood.
Looking entirely ordinary, the person flapped their arms, at a loss, feet pattering.
“Faster, go faster!! At this rate you’ll be late! Don’t rest! Don’t stop!”
It had started.
“If you go back to the stairs now, you can get down to the plat—”
“Be quiet, will you!”
I stifled a sigh and moved under tension.
The two project members who’d been looking at me so desperately tried to edge closer to me.
Clunk, clunk.
“Yeonhwa!”
The researchers walked the neighborhood.
Another door opened, and another ordinary figure stepped out and shouted.
Their eyes and nose were red, as if they’d been crying.
“Dad... go to work, quick....”
“Sis, you can’t be here—the sun’s up, get out! Run!”
“Dear, don’t come home! Go do your job!”
All around the moving researchers, doors opened here and there. And voices called the researchers’ names and titles, screaming for them not to come home.
On their faces—bewilderment, fear, and interest all at once.
For some, the last grew larger.
“I see some anomaly. Fascinating! Maybe this ghost story hides something valuable in the house—and that’s why it’s trying to drive us out....”
“Jegang.”
“......”
“Don’t walk. You should run. Now.”
“Bro! I told you—get to the office!”
“Eunha, you still have tasks, right? You do!”
Gwak Jegang smiled faintly.
“Hm, how about having someone try going into a house instead? We should test it! In my memory at least, our company hasn’t registered a darkness like—”
“Please! Be quiet!”
Spitting with rage, the team leader whipped around and shouted at Gwak Jegang.
“Then you go in! I’m not doing any Field Exploration Team—glrkrkrrlrlrgrrgrrrrlll.”
“......”
“......”
“Wrnghrhrrrhhrrrlll.”
“Team leader?”
The head of Research Team 2 grabbed his own neck.
And began to twist.
With wet cracks and crunches, his neck turned—turned and broke—and blood surged out of the mouth set above the warped, knotted spine.
Thud.
The researcher standing behind him got splashed, face-on, with the team leader’s blood.
“Huh?”
......
“Rrrrrrrrrlll.”
The team leader grabbed that researcher’s head and twisted it, too.
“Rrrrlrrlrlrrl.”
The researcher thrashed and shrieked and shook all over—
—and grabbed his own neck and twisted it.
“Aaaaaaaah!!”
“What—what!?”
Researchers stumbled, screamed, scattered.
If you raised your head you still saw a bright, warm midday neighborhood, but in front of our eyes, bloodstains and screams filled the scene and pandemonium began.
Damn it!
The team leader and the researcher with the wrenched necks kept moving, chasing the ones still alive.
“Aagh!”
I lunged on reflex, yanked a researcher free, and hurled him back—but I realized a moment later.
Nowhere near enough.
“Aaaagh!!”
“There’s one here too!”
The relative-shapes who’d been shouting at them not to stop had vanished at some point.
In their place, down every alley, ones with turned necks were staggering out, bodies twisting.
Hands outstretched.
Eyes serenely closed—faces turned where the back of the head should be.
“Wh-What... hiii!”
This scene—like a mad nightmare during a nap—was precisely the ghost story of Noon Station.
Those who visited the station thinking of a shelter after seeing the alias “Nap Shelter” soon realized that “nap” at Noon Station meant eternal rest.
They sprinted the alleys for food and necessities to escape the sleep that chased them, but the bottomless obsession with rest and home did not easily let them go.
Mercifully—until the moment when every last person slept.
Until peace came for them.
Do you know what that “sleep” was hyperlinked to?
“Zombie.”
At last, I understand the meaning of that phrasing in vivid detail.
I thought being alone meant that worst case I could just die and be done with it.
Watching this hellscape unfold—it chokes the breath out of me.
[Oh, heavens. Look at that filth! Friend, it will ruin your style. Do not engage—let’s go elsewhere!]
...Maybe I should do as he says.
While these people “pull aggro,” I might be able to run around and check the things worth finding in this station.
Maybe I could even soothe myself with the thought that most of these researchers are sociopaths anyway....
“Aaaagh!”
Damn.
Fine—spill it.
I pressed the tattoo over my heart and reflexively summoned the only way to dodge this whole situation.
Just boosting strength is inefficient.
If the description of “Nap Shelter” is right, they’ll keep coming without end.
So—better to choose something that lets me avoid danger, hide easily, and see far.
The only contamination I carry as a tattoo that’s small in form.
And...
Something that makes others follow me well.
Tap.
My body pinched down into a black cat as I sprang up, light-footed, onto the top of the wall.
“Uh—uhhh?!”
“A—A cat...!”
I planted myself in front of the two project members who had kept chasing me, and began leading the way.
[This way]
“Ah...!!”
At least save these two.
I need the intel.
I steered them toward places where the turned-neck entities spawned less.
The two researchers looked at me—at the black cat—as if they couldn’t believe it, but in the end they followed.
“Help me—help—grrglglgl.”
“Aaaah!”
“Hh—hhk, hhk, I don’t want to die....”
I kept springing along the tops of walls, checking the safest route I could. Over corners, past uncontrolled crossings, into a shabby house lane beside a main road.
We have to get back to the platform!
[This way]
The two chased me like mad. But they seemed short on coordination or stamina, panting hard, and at one corner one of them staggered and collided with someone.
“Ack!”
“Mr. Lee Kyung!”
I tried to bodily shove the fallen researcher up at once, but I was too late.
“Wrhhrhrhrrl.”
Right before my eyes, his own sleepy neck turned, and blood poured.
Shit!
I swallowed the scream and cut a new line.
Only one remained, chasing me, bloodless with terror—and the instant we turned again—
Two other researchers, splashed with blood, burst out of a side alley and locked eyes on me.
“Section Chief Gwak! Move!”
shouted the researcher who’d been following me.
But instead of heeding him, Gwak Jegang’s eyes lit up the moment he saw me, and he fell in behind.
“Eek!”
And the researcher accompanying Gwak bared their teeth as if in decision—and began following me, the black cat, as well.
“Hah—”
[This way]
I tried to signal other researchers at intersections—steering them toward whatever looked safer—but it rarely took.
And moving got steadily harder.
Got it. The closer we got in direction and distance to the platform stairs, the more of the “turned-neck entities” there were.
I couldn’t breathe.
Should we duck into a house for a moment?
But wouldn’t that just get us isolated?
I skimmed between two turned-neck figures by a hair and leapt onto another wall to scout the route again....
And on the far side of the wall, I spotted something.
A bright silver rectangular box.
A fire hydrant.
...!
That might—
[This way]
I guided the ones I was leading toward the hydrant.
Then smacked it with a forepaw.
“H-Here?”
[This way]
“No, that’s....”
“Out of the way if you’re not helping!”
With a hearty motion, Gwak Jegang yanked the hydrant open and dove in first.
And once the others were in, I slipped through the gap myself.
Thump!
The door shut.
Strangely, the inside of the hydrant was larger than it looked from outside.
As expected.
...Just like Yeongeun had told me, fire hydrants were special spaces in Se-gwang’s subway.
“Hah.”
The researchers caught their breath.
[Quiet]
They clamped hands over their mouths.
Step, step....
...Outside the hydrant, I heard bare feet walking.
Until the sound went past, the three researchers—everyone but Gwak Jegang—clutched their mouths with desperate force.......
[Clear]
“Whew.”
Only after my signal did they exhale in relief, gasping.
And only then did I recognize the face of the researcher who’d been with Gwak Jegang.
A woman with heavy dark circles and glasses.
...Deputy Lee Yeonhwa.
One of the almost uniquely ethical researchers in this company.
Even in this wreck of a situation, a flicker of relief and gladness tried to rise—
“...Black cat.”
Deputy Lee Yeonhwa started and stared at me.
......??
“Section Chief Gwak, th-that entity—ident code Qterw-A-1845—the black cat!”
Excuse me?
“Grade A darkness!”
Me?
“The one that saved people at the Mermaid Grave—the one the pony staffer got hit with worship-type contamination over...!”
Ah.