It falls.
I knew.
Ever since I woke up at Daydream’s new-employee orientation, I’ve been forgetting—bleached out—who I originally was.
About my life as Kim Soleum.
I don’t remember my family or friends well.
I’m certain they existed. I remember the feelings and how precious they were, but the concrete, detailed things are slipping away.
So maybe that’s why I didn’t find it strange that nothing appeared in the place on the Scale of Malice where what I love should have shown up....
Because now there’s nothing.
Only the feeling of home remains.
A place that isn’t scary, a place of daily life, where I originally existed wholly as myself.
Only my wish to return there remained, and that intense obsession ultimately converged into one thing.
The phone grip.
A way to go home—something I might be able to pull off, a method visible right before my eyes.
[Through the Scale of Malice, it has been determined that the candidate’s heart contains a psychological value that overrides ethical and moral judgment.]
The right pan holding the phone grip slammed to the floor.
The left pan, which held the silver heart extracted from my chest, shot sharply upward.
[Under present circumstances, this is an evildoer for whom guidance is impossible. Re-evaluation is permanently terminated, and—]
My heart sprang out beyond the giant scale.
[We sentence the candidate to humanitarian exec—]
“Wait!!”
Someone burst out of the line and sprinted into the courtroom.
They snatched the knife’s handle, which was speared through the organ flying off the scale, out of the air.
“...!”
Setting the heart back on the scale, they shouted.
“I’m an agent too!”
It was the Bronze Agent.
[202■Management no. 370616, candidate for selec—]
The speaker cut off.
Ryu Jaegwan’s dead face was revealed at the front of the courtroom.
[Deceased.
We have found a defect in the candidate qualifications.]
Someone already dead is not qualified to be a candidate.
[We revoke candidate qualifications for 202■Management no. 370616, Ryu Jaegwan. Leave the courtroom at once—]
“Please wait.”
The Bronze Agent looked at the scale with sunken eyes, then turned to the speaker.
“As I said, I’m also an agent. I have the authority to engage with this selection process.”
What are they doing?
No matter how much they’d picked up by watching the trial, this was too much. Or—did they plan this? That they themselves wouldn’t be at risk since they weren’t the target?
That won’t be the case.
It only looks like it ups the odds of being subsumed by the ghost story! They could just leave now. Both Deputy Eun Haje and the Bronze Agent....
“My agent name is Che—”
“This person isn’t affiliated with Se-gwang Special City. They’re an agent from the Seoul HQ.”
I cut in.
“They don’t have authority to engage with the selection. Different jurisdiction....”
“No, I do.”
“...!”
The Bronze Agent stared at the speaker.
The look of someone who had finished thinking it through.
“The Se-gwang branch requested support from Seoul Headquarters, did it not.”
“...!!”
Damn it.
“I came in response to that request, so I have the authority to engage with this trial.”
“Agent,”
I grabbed the Bronze Agent in a hurry.
“If you keep this up, you might be subordinated to this supernatural disaster—stop....”
“Ah, sure. Same goes for me.”
Agent Choi!
“We’re agents of Seoul’s Team Hyeonmu 1.”
They threw their arms around our shoulders.
“What are you doing.”
“Be quiet.”
Agent Choi’s gaze skimmed my heart set on the scale as if they wanted to retrieve it, then they looked away as if gauging the risk and spoke.
“...Selector speaking through that speaker—come out and talk with us! It looks like the Scale of Malice is being misused. I never thought it was such a great piece of equipment to begin with.”
Agent Choi grinned.
“In an emergency like this, if you hound people to the extreme and interrogate them, you think they can make sound judgments? Or do you not know information obtained by torture isn’t accurate?”
The speaker stayed frighteningly unresponsive.
But Agent Choi raised their voice even more.
“Even with a Silver Heart showing up, you threw ‘unsuitable.’ When we look at supernatural disasters, that alone qualifies as an exceptional case!”
“Yes.”
On the Bronze Agent’s nape, instead of cold sweat, the pallor of the dead showed.
“So as stakeholders, we recommend this. ...You cannot judge a citizen’s rescue eligibility by this method.”
Why are they doing this?
Even if I’m executed humanely, the odds are high I’ll end up outside Se-gwang Special City. I can prepare again and go back in. Shouldn’t they worry more about their own situation?
Are they worried I might die permanently inside this ghost story? Like those piles of corpses beneath the glass.
Doesn’t seem likely.
They seem to be trying a ghost-story countermeasure, but it would be safer to attempt it after my trial.
Very quietly, only for the agents to hear, I spoke low.
“Hey, it’s really fine.”
“Shut your mouth.”
“I mean it. I was just going to smash the scale anyway.”
“......!”
Exactly like setting the Noon Station residential district on fire.
If the method of judgment disappears, they’ll have to conclude it.
And since it wouldn’t break easily, I’d planned to drag every contamination out and raise hell.
I had also assumed the odds of dying in the process were high.
“I did it expecting to die anyway. So it’s fine—”
“No. You are not fine.”
The Bronze Agent cut me off.
“You are precisely the one with a high probability of becoming subordinated to this supernatural disaster.”
What?
“There’s nothing more susceptible to being swallowed by a supernatural disaster than someone mentally cornered and in a panic. Therefore....”
“I am not in a panic.”
“...Agent Podo.”
The Bronze Agent motioned with their eyes toward the phone grip on the scale.
“Why is that precious to you?”
Why?
Am I allowed to say?
Caution rose for a moment—but then I realized it was meaningless with Agent Choi, who had already heard everything, standing beside me.
They’ll share it anyway.
So....
“...It’s a way to go home.”
“.......”
“No—call it a symbol of the method.”
The more I spoke, the more rambling it sounded, so I forced the words into shape.
“It’s something I newly discovered, and I didn’t know I could find a way to go back again....”
“.......”
“Honestly, I barely remember home anymore, but it can’t be helped. If you see this as proof that I’m excessively fixated on home right now, I have no excuse. That part may look strange—”
“No.”
“...!”
“As I said before, I understand wanting to go home. That’s not it....”
The Bronze Agent asked:
“Then why did the phone grip, not the home you want to return to, appear up there?”
......!
That—
“Even if your memories are dim, there must have been symbols that would unmistakably feel like home. Didn’t you see it just now? What went up on Agent Choi’s scale.”
The scene of Team Hyeonmu 1’s waiting room.
It’s only an image, but anyone who knows Agent Choi could guess what it implies.
“But you, Agent Podo, right now—what appeared was not ‘home’ but only the means to get home.”
.......
The phone grip.
“Isn’t that backwards?”
It was like a bucket of cold water dashed over my head.
Wait.
I looked again at the phone grip on the scale.
Right. Prioritizing the means to return home over ‘home’ itself is, on common sense, strange....
Isn’t the scale wrong?
That question surged up—but instead of following it easily, this time I forced it down and dragged out a harder question.
Then does it imply something else?
For example... the Darkness Exploration Record itself?
No.
If so, the scale wouldn’t have overturned.
I recalled the researchers.
The uncanny feeling that my way of seeing darkness resembled theirs was because I can’t just find real-world horror interesting....
That hasn’t inverted.
If so—
There was only one answer.
I’m simply fixated on the very situation that I can go home.
Because it was too sweet.
Because with a way home right before my eyes, I couldn’t bear it.
Because if I could extract the true original Wish-Voucher from that Dream Cultivator, I felt I could do anything.
That moment seized me.
Ah.
The shock when the potion button slotted into the Dream Cultivator.
The calculation and the catharsis.
The overwhelming craving.
.......
Could it be that I’m now...
...over-captured by that intense impression?
“.......”
“Agent Podo.”
I looked around.
...For the first time, certain things came into focus.
The party’s expressions.
Those complicated thoughts.
Their worry about this supernatural disaster and my state, their concern for the long-term missing lined up behind us, the tension....
Tension.
I looked at my hands.
Damp with sweat, my hands were trembling slightly.
...I was putting in too much force.
But I didn’t quite know how to let go.
[Hm. How about a big breath in, and let it out slowly? In through the nose, out through the mouth. A simple calming technique. Now....]
I did as told.
[Good, friend!]
Deep breaths.
.......
What had been pulsing through my shoulders, chest, and down to my extremities eased with my breathing.
I lowered my hands.
My head swam for a moment, then cleared.
Right.
...So I was a bit off.
Ever since I learned the button’s identity on the Dream Cultivator, my eyes had rolled back completely and I’d barreled ahead without considering anything else.
I thought I was keeping it together.
I wasn’t.
I had to rein it in.
Maybe I can’t make normal judgments right now....
I struggled not to surrender my mind to the impulse to just smash the scale and get out.
From here on... I have to keep checking myself as I judge.
“Thank you.”
“......!”
“I’ve come to my senses a bit.”
I nodded to the Bronze Agent. A hint of relief seemed to touch their face.
At that moment.
The small phone grip set upon the vast gray balance wavered—and blinked.
“......!”
The Dream Cultivator, the Wish-Voucher, the abstract vistas I’d guessed to be the popup store, the smartphone screen—the image within the scale shook....
It wouldn’t settle; it kept changing.
“See, it’s changing in real time! If you want to claim this is the Disaster Management Bureau, listen to the field agents, will you?”
Agent Choi’s voice boomed loud enough to shred a throat. They whipped out a fisking blade and a metal badge and actually waved them.
“Here! I’ve got agent credentials too!”
But the speaker was mute.
“Check—”
At that instant—
[Unable to confirm.]
“...!”
[unabletoconfirmunabletoconfirmunabletoconfirmunabletoconfirm
unabletoconfirmunabletoconfirmunabletoconfirmunabletoconfirm
unabletoconfirmunabletoconfirmunabletoconfirmunabletoconfirm
unabletoconfirmunabletoconfirmunabletoconfirmunabletoconfirm]
The speaker’s voice warped. Distorted. A strange sound flooded the courtroom.
“...Sounds similar to when the hold came.”
“Looks like it can’t recognize us as agents.”
“Right.”
The two stood on either side of me, tense eyes lifted toward the speaker.
[Submit your evidence submit evidence window verifier absent agent death confirmed death confirmed death confirmed death confirmed death confirmed death confirmed death confirmed death confirmed death confirmed death confirmed death confirmed death confirmed death confirmed death confirmed death confirm—]
Clunk.
[At present, the ■■■■-Bureau branch in Se-gwang Special City has no personnel who can verify identity evidence for stakeholders.]
The agents’ shoulders stiffened.
[We deny the stakeholder approval request—]
“But isn’t there something someone can say even without being a stakeholder?”
Footsteps in dress shoes came out from behind.
“Ah, I’m not an agent, just someone who’d like a word.”
Deputy Eun Haje’s voice.
“This is a trial either way, isn’t it? I mean, at minimum, because it’s proceeding in the form of a trial at a court.”
.......
Right.
—Mm. Then let us advance. This is a step toward judgment—no, toward standing trial!
I recalled Brown’s words.
My head cleared further.
“In that case, appeal should be possible, shouldn’t it? And we should be able to appoint counsel and call witnesses.”
Correct.
“Noru usually cracks these like this... well, this happens to be a field I know better than you, so I spoke up.”
Deputy Eun Haje smiled at me, then looked to the speaker.
“Procedurally, isn’t that right?”
[202■Management no. 370617, candidate for selec—]
“Yeah, yeah. I’m dead, that’s right. Want a longer intro? I was a reporter. You know Haengseon Ilbo? I’m from there.”
Deputy Eun Haje stepped forward, hand on my shoulder.
“And let’s say I’m this person’s witness, roughly speaking.”
Deputy....
“This candidate is a special case, so don’t process it summarily—what I’m demanding is a proper public trial. Let’s have a proper formal court proceeding.”
Their voice rang through the courtroom.
“You lot keep throwing a fit about stakeholder verification, so fine—just treat the people here as this person’s counsel and witnesses.”
.......
The speaker fell silent.
Even the long-term missing of this Scales Court, who should be standing behind us, were weirdly quiet as mice.
And in the courtroom halted by that silence, at last, the pronouncement rang out.
[Confirmed.]
“...!”
[Taking into account the scale’s fluctuation and the testimony, we cancel the selection process for 202■Management no. 370614, candidate for selection Kim Soleum, and refer the case to a formal trial....]
I clenched my fist.
The courtroom warped dizzily; the background heaved, leaving only the gray scale starkly clear....
In the blink of an eye—
Darkness spread on all sides.
“...!”
I was standing alone in the dark.
And then—
Tt-t-t-t-tunk.
Pin spots dropped one by one from far off.
A new space came into view.
Similar to the courtroom earlier, but with seating on both sides.
Dozens of empty seats were washed by meaningless light, but in the places near me, my party sat to either side.
I saw the agents and the deputy trading glances with tense faces.
And finally—
Tunk.
A spotlight dropped on me.
And opposite me, the gigantic scale still stood, my extracted heart set upon it.
The voice that had spoken from the speaker now rang in the air.
[We will open the formal trial of 202■Management no. 370614, candidate for selection Kim Soleum.]
“Good.”
But then, something even Deputy Eun Haje hadn’t expected occurred.
[All jurors, please enter.]
“......!!”
From the dozens of empty seats, dark silhouettes took form.
They were people in agent uniforms.
But their shapes were warped, grotesque beyond resembling human—torsos entirely missing, burned, or in forms that defied description.
“These bastards... they’re using a jury.”
[Candidate, step forward.]
The dead agents of Se-gwang Special City stared at me.