Thump. Thump.
The sound of my heartbeat pounds hard inside my head.
I laid my hand on the tattoo by my heart.
The contamination I’d crammed in there and sorted.
The products of ghost stories I’d separated from myself.
“‘Noru is an empty shell’? What is that supposed to mean—‘the real one is inside’? Are you talking about the contamination...?”
From the jurors’ box, voices protest as if arguing. Then, on several of the jurors’ seats, the lights go out.
[If the disturbance continues, you will be removed from the court.]
“......”
There’s a short sound like someone grinding their teeth—and the jurors’ box falls quiet.
But Juror No. 1 is still looking at me.
An agent whose face can’t be seen.
[202■Management Candidate for Selection No. 370614.
Kim Soleum.]
I caught my breath and lifted my head.
[At Juror No. 1’s request, we will proceed with additional questioning.
Step forward and answer.]
Step forward?
“Urk.”
From my chest, something burst outward like ripping cloth and pressed down on my features with a sharply vivid pain.
I staggered and tried to retreat—but then....
“Did you call for the gentleman?”
[This way]
w h o a n s w e r s f o r m e ?
—What is going on here? My goodness, could we get cameras in first? An interrogation is bound to be provocative and our viewers will love it!
[This isn’t a school, yet I’m seeing outfits that look familiar somehow....]
hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
Contaminations.
My contaminations sprang out and started answering. I can’t plug them—what’s pulled out of the tattoo smears over me like vomit and backflows, overruns me without control, swallows me whole just as it pleases...!
Put it back in!
I tried to shove it back into the tattoo, but the exposed truth won’t be hidden in front of the court. N—!
[Questioning will proceed based on the “motiveless murder” weight on the Scale.
Has the candidate for selection ever taken the life of an innocent third party by their own will?]
[This way]
—Categorically no! Though I have, to my great honor, participated in the production of a talk show that makes the hearts of innocent viewers flutter!
Welcome to Looky Mart! Shall I help with checkout?
n o
“Those difficult words are hard for our pupils to understand! Use this sentence: ‘Have you ever killed someone for no reason?’”
Answers without reason or feeling, inhuman replies, unreasoning obsessive mutters spill out. I I am not that—but even in there, there is no answer that I have harmed someonethankgoodnessreliefinsteadIfeellikevomiting
The jurors’ box is quiet; only up here on the dais, the contaminations yammer out of order however they please, and their noise fills the vast space....
[Testimony received.]
Good.
Good—this is it, it’s over!
[We proceed to the next question.]
Shut up!
Eve—
[Can the candidate for selection swear not to harm the life of an innocent third party for their own benefit?]
Of course!
Of course I can swea—
[It is impossible.]
It feels like my heart drops.
[A game, by nature, begins with harming someone for one’s own benefit. At school, we sometimes survive by inducing the sacrifice of another student.]
That—
—Ladies and gentlemen of the audien... no, the jury, what do we make of the phrase “innocent third party”? Certainly, it appears in some criminal-law text.
—But how about in reality?
Shut up.
—What I do today to stay alive may, unexpectedly, put someone else’s life at risk!
—But isn’t that life?
No!
I’ve never thought that. That’s contamination—a distortion born of ghost stories.
—Even if someone else’s hardship moves you, you don’t have to take responsibility for it! It’s perfectly normal that no one can predict every outcome of their actions. Just because something bad happens doesn’t mean it’s that person’s fault.
—So then, “I won’t harm an innocent third party for my own benefit”? Who could make such a sweeping, meaningless vow?
That, that....
i f y o u ’ r e a f r a i d
m a y b e y o u c a n ’ t
“......”
c a n ’ t
p r o m i s e
The voice falls weak, like a deflated balloon.
The comforting emotional expression of a theme-park mascot for children.
A voice unsure, a tone of resignation, a candid admission....
A feeling that sounds familiar, somehow.
—In extremis, life is a high-wire act. Every time you pull off a safe, splendid performance, you let out a sigh of relief and repeat. It’s hard to look too far ahead or to take on too much responsibility.
—For a program to survive, it has to be more thrilling and fun and stimulating.
To survive....
—Is it so wrong if we’re a little selfish? For a show to be compelling, it needs its share of self-centeredness.
“......”
I listened to the contaminations’ voices borrowing my mouth.
No.
Voices coming from inside me.
When did it start?
I stopped venting the irritation or fury that boiled up when I saw people who were no help in ghost stories.
My self-centered judgments got rarer—the kind that said, I have to live, so there’s nothing for it but to let the trolling ones die, and at least save the ones I can.
Even when I met someone easy to agitate or use, I stopped cheering through a thin wash of guilt and whispering thank you.
And in ghost stories, trying to seize the mood by deceiving or frightening others—if I wasn’t sure they were villains, I stopped doing it.
All the things I did while screaming inwardly, we all have to live through this, please just cooperate a little—
They were gone.
“......”
I looked down at my hands.
They looked like human hands.
The original me I had wanted so desperately when I was 130666, just pulp.
But am I truly the former Kim Soleum?
I worked to live like a person.
I lived trying to make the smoothest, most human choices possible.
But is that really me?
From the jurors’ box, Deputy Eun Haje and the Bronze Agent each argued completely different positions.
Judgments based on individual experience, individual selfishness, individual jagged edges.
I clearly had those too.
But at some point, they disappeared.
And now I know why.
...I thought they were contamination.
I had lumped all my “odd traits that overlap with ghost stories” together as contamination.
Because I was afraid.
Because if it was contamination’s influence, then my mind would collapse after my body collapsed into something inhuman, and I’d go back to that state.
So I stuffed those in together with the contamination jammed into the tattoo and sealed them.
Because I was afraid.
.......
I remember the day I first received treatment at the Fox Counseling Room, the conversation I had with Brown.
—I like who I am now better.
—I don’t enjoy having my criteria flip like a sheet of paper.
I feared that contamination meant losing myself.
So I was desperate to cut out the contamination itself—but if that, in reverse, meant I’d cut myself out—
“......”
I raised my hand.
“...I would like to address Juror No. 1.”
[Permitted.]
I lifted my head and looked at the agent whose face couldn’t be seen.
“You’re right.”
—You separated and isolated your own warped desires, warped thoughts, extreme emotions, every abnormal judgment—and handed them off to other personas within yourself.
“The unpleasant desires, thoughts, extreme emotions, abnormal judgments inside me....”
I said,
“They’re all mine.”
The contamination was exactly what burst out.
“Some of what I said just now might have been impulsive and inappropriate...”
I drew a deep breath.
“...but they are also things I’ve thought at least once.”
I remember what happened at Hanbit Library.
How every page composing the book is myself.
I remember the advice I heard at the Cosmic Mall.
The counsel not to destroy the contamination inside me.
That’s why I chose the tattoo.
With my hand on the pattern over my chest, I recalled the tagline that explained this Moonlight Tattoo....
Master yourself!
The most primal and essential task. But when your heart is crowded with identities and vexations, it’s hard to gather them as one and master them.
Give each one an index tab and a seam to join.
So you can sort and fit them together whenever you wish.
A seam to join.
To sort and fit together.
Not to cram and padlock, but to index and organize.
“......”
I laid my hand on the tattoo.
And I realized that tattoo made of concentric rings turns and moves along its central axis....
Ah.
...I understand now why the Moonlight Tattoo Shop advised against a cover tattoo.
I wasn’t properly “enjoying” what this tattoo can do.
“I acknowledge it.”
The sorted contamination turns.
The motto I’d inscribed, the contaminations I’d jammed in—are reestablished.
The identities that truly aren’t mine, the infection-level oddities, go to the outer rim; the rest nearer to the heart.
Feelings and judgments that were originally mine, and changes that manifested differently after meeting contamination, move closer to the center.
A rough texture collides inside me. Anxiety, selfishness, impulse, aggression, lust for destruction, a mind for deceit, performance, a sense of superiority, cowardice, curiosity, excitement....
Extreme, sharp emotions bump inside and enter my body vividly.
But soon they feel familiar.
They have to. They were mine to begin with.
“......”
I took my hand away.
The erupting contaminations—their impulsiveness and weakness, their protruding oddness—are still in my head.
But it was fine.
Because they were always there.
“All of that is me.”
.......
[Juror No. 1, you may speak.]
Juror No. 1 raises a hand again and looks at me.
[We have verified the validity of the candidate’s statement.
We recognize the subject as a single, whole state fit to be weighed on the Scale of Malice.]
He smiles.
Now I could make it out.
I saw the contours of the juror’s face show under the lights. It was....
[I recommend extracting his heart again and placing it on the Scale.]
My own face.
Agent Podo wearing glasses.
[202■Management Candidate for Selection No. 370614.
Place your heart back on the Scale of Malice.]
“......”
[Candidate Kim Soleum.]
“Yes.”
I drew in a breath.
Then, tearing my gaze off Juror No. 1 at last, I quickly retrieved my silver heart from the Scale.
I pressed it back into my chest—
Then slid the blade in again, split, and drew it out.
Over the tattoo.
“......”
This time, the stamped-out heart wasn’t as pale as before.
It was silver, but there was a kind of weighty texture to it.
It looks heavier than before.
Even so, I set it on the Scale.
On the opposite pan where the “motiveless murder” weight had been added, the needle sloshes under the mass.
“!”
I almost screamed without meaning to, but held myself back.
The great gray balance scale wobbles, swaying side to side—
And then, it tilts to one side.
“......”
The weight of sin drops heavily.
[Pass.]
My heart hovers above the pan on the Scale, calm and steady.
Lower than before, but unmistakably, undeniably.
[Under the regulations of the Supernatural Disaster Management Bureau, Candidate for Selection No. 202■Management 370614 is determined to be a citizen, not a requisition target.]
The gazes looking down at me from the jurors’ box grow faint.
[We also recognize the validity of the candidate’s statement that the Se-gwang Special City branch does not officially exist at present, and hereby declare an official suspension of rescue and selection operations.]
Bang, bang.
There’s the sound of a gavel, and all the pin spots in the courtroom go black.
And the darkness over the entire space fades away.
A blank white space.
“Agent Podo!”
I saw my party leaping down from the jurors’ box.
[Oh, it seems the show is over in this courtroom now. Everyone is leaving their assigned seats.]
Right.
I watched the courtroom grow dimmer and dimmer.
The agents in the jurors’ seats vanished one by one.
...They might be the small grudges of dead agents, or something that imitated them, but either way, I hope they find peace getting out of this ghost story.
*If possible, I should confirm again.... *
“Podo, retrieve!”
Ah.
I took my heart off the Scale and pushed it back into my chest. And at that timing, I saw a little movement under the Scale of Malice.
“......?”
A thread dyed in the five directional colors.
It slid up, coiling, and wound into Agent Choi’s arms from the end of the jurors’ box.
Wait.
Was that guy planning to tamper with the Scale’s needle if it came to it?
What the hell is that—like some shameless fishmonger cheating a buyer with the scale? He’s not even here to buy sashimi.
I was dumbfounded, and also a little amused.
...And I was grateful.
But at the same time, I noticed Agent Choi had also been looking at Juror No. 1, just like me.
“Agent.”
I stepped close and whispered low.
“Did you keep watching Juror No. 1 because you figured out who they were?”
“...Their identity?”
“...I mean Agent Podo.”
Maybe my agent self had been recognized as a juror and took a seat up there.
In this kind of ghost story, interrogating yourself is another cliché.
But when Agent Choi heard me, his face hardened.
“Agent?”
“...Did Podo look like Podo to you?”
And with a face beaded with cold sweat, he smiled.
“To me, it looked like my face.”
“......!”
I snapped my head around at once.
Juror No. 1’s seat.
The person sitting there was watching me up close.
With Agent Podo’s face.
“...Who are you?”
A mouth opens.
[The projection that remains here.]
The next moment.
The courtroom blew away completely.
In the consciousness burning white and vanishing, I saw the face and outfit of the Agent Podo seated at Juror No. 1 change to something else before I knew it....
As if, having been caught while disguised, it was showing its true form.
...From Juror No. 1’s seat,
Ho Yuwon’s face was smiling.
***
I opened my eyes.
The cozy interior of the Fox Counseling Room came into view.
“...!!”
I got out?
It was the first time I’d come out of Se-gwang Special City alive.
I pushed myself up from the bed.
Countless questions rose in my head, and the person who matched the biggest question was right in front of me.
“Noru?”
“Ho Yuwon.”
I shot up from the bed on the spot.
“What I just saw at Morning Station in the Special City....”
.......
Wait.
Huh?
I raised my hand and gripped my neck.
The feel of leather, the feel of a zipper.
130666’s security suit.
But....
“Ah.”
...I can speak.
“......!!”
I hurriedly dropped my hand to check.
130666’s hand in a leather glove.
I lifted my other hand, trembling, pulled the zipper down, and peeled off the black glove....
A human hand came into view.
“......”
I grabbed my head and took off the gas mask.
Then I turned to look.
In the mirror, I saw Kim Soleum.