Chapter 161: Ch 161: On her way
A rookie agent had been infected.
"Agent?"
Ryu Jaekwan had already experienced similar situations multiple times.
An agent who miscounted the final step and stepped onto the wrong stair.
An agent who endured two days without a drop of water, only to be
contaminated by a raindrop falling into the membrane of their eye...
They just disappear.
Just like that.
Without context, without warning.
The kind of eeriness that some find entertaining is what people often call an
ghost story...
But for the person involved, it was only natural for it to feel like a common
tragedy.
Just like now.
"Bronze-ah."
At that moment, his superior quickly bumped his shoulder and slung an arm
around him.
"...!"
And with a finger on his back, he wrote one word.
So the infected rookie agent wouldn’t notice.
Calm.
"Grapes-ie! But hey, we should get going. Your hand’s about to disappear
too, right?"
"Ah..."
The rookie agent, Kim Soleum, looked down at his right arm, which had
been severed and vanished, and answered rather brightly.
"It’s fine! The Mermaid Princess said she’d give me a new one. I’ll be
okay!"
"...Is that so?"
"Yes! Look over here, I even got this..."
Kim Soleum lifted a few items the children had given him and proudly
showed them off.
In reality, they were all worn-out, shabby trinkets, glittering only in the eyes
of the Twinkle Twinkle Ocean Palace. The kind of toys only young
children, not full-grown adults, might like.
"...Right. Just a sec."
The two of them let Kim Soleum continue playing with the kids and quickly
stepped aside to speak in hushed urgency.
"I don’t know what the hell happened, but the infection’s already way too
deep."
Half his face was covered in tumors, and the infection core, manifesting as
a ’tail’, had grown far too large.
Normally, something like this wouldn’t happen after just three days.
Had he actually entered the ’Ocean Palace’ and come back? Or maybe
something went wrong when he came into contact with the kids? Or
perhaps Kim Soleum himself simply had a body that was exceptionally
vulnerable to biological disasters.
Either way, while rare, it wasn’t impossible for a rookie to experience such
a thing. But with his mind already seeming contaminated, it was hard to
confirm anything through him right now.
Or maybe...
"You don’t think that cat..."
"..."
...A more dangerous entity had intervened.
Maybe to push them along.
Ryu Jaekwan’s face turned pale, then snapped back to focus.
"The conch."
It was the cure.
"We need to bring it. Right now!"
"Wait."
Agent Choi grabbed his arm.
"That cat seemed to give the cure to save the children."
"But Agent Grapes still looks like a child on the outside..."
"Listen to me. If that cat’s a high-risk phenomenon ranked higher than even
the dokkaebi trick our Elder set up... it might not recognize that guy as a
’child’ anymore."
"...!"
Ryu Jaekwan nearly shouted, ’So what, do we just give up?!’
But his superior, Agent Choi, was looking at ’Agent Grapes’ with an
unreadable expression.
"..."
Then, after calming his junior, he walked back over to Kim Soleum among
the children.
"Grapes-ie."
"Yes?"
"Then would it be okay if you just stayed here altogether?"
"Yes!"
Ryu Jaekwan couldn’t hold back and yanked the back of Choi’s collar.
"Sunbae!!"
"Hey, hey, I’m asking to check how far the infection’s gone. ...It’s serious.
It’s not just physical, it’s in his thinking, too..."
"..."
"Let’s get him out now."
"Then..."
"No, I mean the way we always do."
Agent Choi sighed and patted his junior’s back.
"Bronze-ah, Bronze-ah. Get it together. Our escape method isn’t based on
infection levels. It’s based on the time of disappearance."
"...!!"
That’s right.
According to the Disaster Management Bureau’s escape protocol, a child
wouldn’t vanish into nothing if their disappearance had occurred within the
last 1000 days.
And Agent Grapes had only been here for three days. He still met the
criteria!
"All we have to do is convince him to leave. I’ll send him out, so just keep
the kids from scattering, okay?"
Then he turned toward the infected Kim Soleum and called out in a cheerful
voice.
"Let’s come back to the Ocean Palace next time, Grapes-ie! But how about
we play balloon ride on the way? Just like when we came here earlier,
floating up, nice and easy!"
It was one of the escape routes identified by the Disaster Management
Bureau.
Do you remember?
Wasn’t it said that children’s books with a surprise appendix titled ’How to
Get to the Twinkle Twinkle Ocean Palace’ were often found scattered
throughout the playrooms?
In truth, those books contained an additional passage.
At the very back of the books that had ’How to Get to the Twinkle Twinkle
Ocean Palace’ written in them, there were rare instances where a method
for returning from the Ocean Palace was included.
That particular page was composed with advanced vocabulary and steps
comparable to professional manuals, demanding a level of reading
comprehension impossible for preschoolers.
All attempts to identify the required materials for the ’returning from
Twinkle Twinkle Ocean Palace’ ritual had ended in failure.
So, to actually use this escape method, the agents carried the necessary
supplies with them directly.
Fortunately, because the entire preparation process was so irrational and
obstructed, the escape method itself was narratively sound.
Up until this very moment.
"It’s not going up..."
"...!!"
This time was an exception.
Agent Choi, with a look like he might bite his tongue, almost gawked at
Kim Soleum dangling from the balloon, but managed to keep a straight
face.
Originally, a child tied to the ’going home balloon’ would close their eyes
and gently float into the sky, and when the balloon eventually popped, they
would fall—
And be found rolling out from a slide.
That was how it was supposed to work...
But the balloon wasn’t rising at all.
This had never happened before.
That’s because no agent had ever been this deeply infected...!
Moreover, the degree of infection usually matched eerily well with the
symptoms of a year of disappearance.
So, any child still within the viable window for escape always floated
upward with the balloon.
But now, a new irregular had occurred.
– If the subject is severely contaminated, the balloon cannot rise into the
sky, rendering the escape method useless.
Like a parasite gripping its host tightly, refusing to let go.
The tumor-tail, ulcerated and grown from Kim Soleum’s back, lay heavily
grounded and squirming.
’...Is he almost fully merged with the ulcer mass?’
Thinking about that bizarre collective entity resembling the Ocean Palace,
Agent Choi’s brow twitched.
Yet his mouth spoke casually.
"Oops~ I must’ve under-inflated it! Let’s try a different way, okay?"
"Okay..."
And the moment Ryu Jaekwan, who had been with the children, saw the
two returning empty-handed, he immediately sprang into action.
"Bronze-ah."
"We need to get the cure right now. The prepa—"
"Bronze-ah."
Agent Choi paused briefly, then spoke slowly...
"Did it ever occur to you that, if Grapes was in his right mind, he would’ve
given up his spot to a child?"
Ryu Jaekwan’s hands froze.
"It did."
"...!"
"That’s exactly why he should be prioritized. Most agents think like that. If
you don’t prioritize them... they’ll give up their lives too easily."
"..."
"Saving the agent means saving more lives."
Ryu Jaekwan’s superior fell silent for a moment, as if at a loss for words.
Then sighed softly.
"I... I don’t know. It’s not like we can assign rankings to human lives....
Wouldn’t it be better to save him just because he’s a comrade?"
"..."
"Was our bureau... always like this? I feel like it used to be different.... But
at some point, everyone started staking their lives on that principle."
"Because they realized it was necessary."
"..."
Ryu Jaekwan knew full well that Agent Choi’s silence leaned closer to
disagreement than agreement.
Still, even Choi let out a small sigh of resignation.
"Anyway, fine. Grapes must be saved."
"...!"
"Let’s go see those cult-company bastards."
But before that.
From the remaining eleven Angel’s Sigh conches, they would have to set
aside one for the agent.
That left room for only ten others.
"Ten children. We’ll have to choose."
"..."
Agent Choi’s eyes dimmed, but regardless, he moved toward Grapes.
"You said you sorted the children by era, right? Can you show me how?"
"Yes!"
Agent Grapes had diligently categorized the children.
Somehow, he had managed to gather all twenty-something children
scattered across the entire city.
’...Did they gain the ability to communicate with each other after becoming
infected and connecting to the hive?’
Ryu Jaekwan pushed aside the chilling speculation.
"These ones all know the same songs!"
The children were sorted—
From kids of the 2010s, all the way back to those from the 1960s.
And a few were explained a little differently.
"These kids... seem like they came from a slightly different place."
They had six fingers, or no whites in their eyes, or claimed to be from
countries that don’t exist on Earth.
Agent Bronze immediately placed them at the end of the priority list—there
was a high chance they weren’t ’civilians’.
...It didn’t feel good.
Assigning ranks to human lives.
Ryu Jaekwan felt a deep fatigue he had momentarily forgotten.
...Tired, as always.
And so, he implicitly prioritized children who had gone missing more
recently.
Because with the intel they had now, those children had the highest
probability of successfully escaping.
"...But still, we’ll bring all of them for now."
"..."
Ryu Jaekwan slowly nodded.
"Alright. Grapes-ie, the kids might get scared now, so how about we walk
and play together? We’ll see the Mermaid Princess tomorrow. Today, you
can play with me."
"Okay!"
They decided to hide Agent Grapes among the children to protect him as
much as possible from Daydream Inc.
If it were revealed that he was an agent, he’d become a target. A group like
Daydream’s elite team would likely know that the Disaster Management
Bureau prioritized agents’ lives over civilians’.
’A contaminated agent... is an easy target.’
At least until they could secure a conch shell and treat him.
With that, they hastened their steps.
And shortly after—
"Ooh! Over here!"
At the agreed-upon location, a staff member wearing a pony mask was
waving, and the rest of the employees watched warily.
’They didn’t run off.’
Ryu Jaekwan confirmed that the tracking signal attached to the conch shell
by Agent Choi was still active, and joined up with the members of
Daydream Inc.
They flinched at the sight of dozens of ’merchildren’, but perhaps due to the
lingering influence of the cat, they didn’t act rashly.
They simply kept a clear distance.
– This way.
After a brief exchange of written notes, the two factions began moving,
each cautiously keeping the other in check.
Downward, into the depths of the city.
"This place... it’s where the kids usually don’t go, right?"
Even seen through the eyes of the ’Twinkle Twinkle Ocean Palace’, it
wasn’t particularly beautiful or remarkable.
A shaded place under a bridge.
In reality, it was beneath a rusted iron bridge that somehow hadn’t
collapsed, beside a stream of black, contaminated water.
There, a small door waited.
However...
"We can’t see it."
The door wasn’t visible to the infected children at all.
Just like the conch shells, they simply didn’t appear to them.
"..."
Then.
Agent Choi, aware of Daydream’s staff watching closely for any slip,
calmly closed his eyes and reached out with his hand.
...Okay. He passed through.
"Ah. So it works if we just trick our senses. If you walk in with your eyes
closed, you can go in."
The only problem was that they’d have to get all twenty-eight children to do
it.
"Hey, kids! Let’s play a game. Let’s see who can walk with their eyes
closed the longest!"
"Um..."
"But it’s scary."
Usually eager to play together, a few of the children now hesitated,
fidgeting strangely.
As if they instinctively felt something was off.
’Damn it.’
...One ominous thought struck the agents. Would they have to leave behind
the kids who couldn’t pass this threshold?
But then.
"Are you a scaredy-cat?"
"...!"
"I-I’m not!"
"Then close your eyes!"
Kim Soleum began encouraging the children.
"You know that shiny thing you see when your eyes are closed? You can see
it, right?"
"Yeah, I see it!"
"Look closely. If you can’t see it yet, just walk a little and it’ll show up."
Amazingly, he succeeded in getting the children to walk forward with their
eyes closed.
"..."
"Agent..."
"...Ah, let’s go."
Agent Choi, who had been watching the scene in a bit of a daze, quickly
came to his senses.
He tapped the shoulder of the anxious Agent Bronze and began to walk.
"Let’s go!"
The children, with their eyes closed, safely passed through the ’wall’ and
entered.
And then.
"Huh."
A place that was not the Twinkle Twinkle Ocean Palace revealed itself to
them.
From the perspective of Daydream Inc.—that is, from the viewpoint of the
ghost story ’Mermaid Grave’—it was nothing more than a slightly less
rusted, harsh-looking steel corridor compared to the outside.
It resembled a hastily built emergency passage for authorized personnel.
But in the eyes of the children...
’Nothing’s there.’
Just a white rectangular path.
As if all texture had been stripped away.
It seemed this area couldn’t sustain the illusion of the ’Twinkle Twinkle
Ocean Palace’.
A space, presumably, somewhat isolated from contamination.
’...This is getting more and more suspicious.’
All the more reason, a veteran would know, that this was likely the correct
path. So he hastened his steps.
"Should I keep my eyes closed?"
"If you open them, you’ll see something amazing, right?"
Thankfully, the children didn’t collapse in fear or burst into tears. If anyone
started to cry, Agent Grapes distracted or comforted them.
"..."
They reached the end of the corridor.
What was visible through the suncatcher item was the true scene beyond.
"Ha."
A roughly constructed, ramshackle terminal.
It seemed there had once been a total of seven escape pods.
In the spots where some alien, mechanical-technology escape pods had
already launched, only dust, filth, and dried infectious fluid remained.
But there was one left. A massive capsule-type escape pod.
Covered in blood.
As they approached, the door’s device spoke.
[Please ve■fy removal of infect■ ■■■.]
Hmm.
– So you just have to show it a severed tail?
When a few employees from Daydream Inc. only nodded weakly in
response and said nothing, Agent Choi quickly added one more thing.
– To the cool person who answers quickly: 50,000 won, haha
– I thought it was to prove you’d hunted an infected entity and helped
stop the spread! That’s how you get access to the pod, haha
As soon as that answer came back, Agent Choi nodded and immediately
handed over cash.
"Yahoo!"
Then, ignoring the giggling employee in the pony mask, he turned around
and called out,
"Alright then... Grapes-ie. Want to come over here? And let’s bring that
friend you were just talking to as well!"
"Yes!"
Kim Soleum, standing among the children, took one child by the hand and
walked toward the escape pod.
Fortunately, it seemed the Daydream employees hadn’t realized he was an
agent.
Ryu Jaekwan, on alert, reached into Baek Saheon’s bag and yanked out
several conch shells as if robbing him, handing them to Agent Choi.
"This..."
Baek Saheon’s quiet stream of curses, swallowed in frustration, didn’t make
it through.
Agent Choi smiled and lifted one of the conch shells, approaching Grapes.
"If you just close your eyes for a second, it’ll be over quick..."
But at that moment.
"What’s that?"
"Whoa! It’s a real white spaceship!"
The child standing beside Grapes suddenly ran toward the escape pod.
"...!"
"Let’s go together!"
Grapes followed the child, running all the way to the front of the escape
pod.
"Wait...!"
Forcibly boarding an infected child onto the escape pod will trigger rapid
shedding, causing ulcers to erupt across the entire body and resulting in
total loss of life signs.
Do not attempt under any circumstances.
It must not happen—!
To make matters worse, the Daydream Inc. employees immediately shifted
into an aggressive stance. Agent Bronze stepped in to block them.
"Grapes-ie!"
"Huh?"
At that moment, Grapes turned at the sound of his name.
Naturally, his tail brushed against the escape pod’s door device.
"...!"
The message displayed the same message again.
[Please ve■fy removal of infect■ ■■■.]
"Wow! You were right! It flashed just now!"
"Right?"
In that brief moment, Agent Choi ran over and yanked both of them back.
Watching the scene through the suncatcher, Agent Bronze let out a short
sigh and dropped his threatening posture toward Daydream Inc.
A tense silence lingered in the air.
"Ha. Still, at least the escape pod isn’t attacking. That’s a relief."
Agent Choi didn’t even have time to wipe the cold sweat from his brow
before he raised the conch shell.
But...
"..."
Agent Bronze felt something strange from the scene he had just witnessed.
The device had reacted again the moment a living tail made contact.
And his superior’s words...
– At least the escape pod isn’t attacking. That’s a relief.
"...!"
Could it be.
"If we just treat the kids, hand them the severed tails, and board them..."
"No."
"...Bronze-ah?"
"This... this isn’t what we think."
Agent Bronze reread the text on the device.
[Please ve■fy removal of infect■ ■■■.]
It read as if one were meant to remove an infection, like killing the infected
merfolk, and verify it.
But...
"This is already a ruined city. Judging by how hastily this escape pod space
was constructed, it must’ve been built in a rush during the final collapse as
a last-ditch escape attempt."
"And?"
"That would mean most of the people expected to use this escape pod were
already infected."
"...!"
Agent Bronze turned again toward the last remaining escape pod.
"And if it really was the last remaining means of escape, it wouldn’t be
strange for it to have been designed under the assumption that everyone was
infected."
"...That makes sense."
Agent Choi’s eyes lit up.
"In that case, to minimize the risk of contagion spreading to other
locations..."
"Yes."
Both agents turned their gaze to the tails.
Those grotesque biological masses, leaking infectious mucus.
"It means the directive is to sever the infectious appendage—the tail—and
then board the escape pod."
Then, the device’s message took on a completely different meaning:
[Please verify removal of infectious protrusion.]
It wasn’t telling them to hunt and kill another infected being.
It was telling them to remove their own infection source: the tail.
Only coherent beings who had severed their tail and ’verified’ it could
safely board.
"Wait. Then that means..."
"Yes."
For the first time today, a faint smile of exhilaration appeared on Agent
Bronze’s face.
"We don’t need to fully cure the infection. If the children simply cut off
their tails and verify it, they should be able to board the escape pod without
the conch shell."
"...!"
"And if we only use the conches on the kids who are at risk of dying from
blood loss when cutting their tails..."
As long as they distribute them correctly—
"We can all get out. Together."
Not a single child left behind.
They could rescue everyone from this supernatural disaster.
* * *
That’s it!
I clenched my fist discreetly.
I was still among the children, so I wouldn’t be noticed, but I had to stifle
the sighs of relief and joy that kept trying to escape my lips.
’We did it.’
By naturally merging Daydream Inc.’s intel with the Disaster Management
Bureau’s, they had reached a conclusion similar to the one I’d reasoned out.
How much effort had it taken to steer everyone to this conclusion without
raising suspicion...!
It’s been a truly brutal day.
I swallowed hard.
’...Even getting infected was a wise choice.’
It would be a lie to say it wasn’t horrifying and revolting.
But the benefits gained by becoming infected were too valuable to give up.
From concealing my identity completely from Daydream Inc. employees by
hiding behind the tumor covering half my face, to ultimately giving them a
direct hint toward the conclusion: ’you can enter the escape pod if you sever
the tail’...
It had been the one and only correct answer. It was the only way to break
through every obstacle naturally, without arousing suspicion.
And...
’...I might be able to take myself off the suspect list too.’
That cat.
Agent Choi knew I could transform into a ’stray animal’. After all, he was
the one who recommended the item.
Of course, due to the effects of the fake Necronomicon, the two couldn’t be
directly linked, but you never know. After escaping, suspicion might still
arise.
’Better to bury it with something stronger.’
That’s why I chose to attempt infection up to ’the limit of what my
rationality could endure’.
Gradually increasing the infected mucus, deliberately ingesting it little by
little.
’This was the limit.’
This current state, with half my face engulfed in tumorous boils.
Able to understand the hive’s will and the strange telepathy shared with the
children, yet without losing my own sense of self.
...Strangely enough, the dokkaebi trick that turned me into a child actually
helped. Maybe because it forcibly fixed me in the form of ’my child self’.
In any case, I’d kept the option of taking a Nostalgia Candy if things went
south...
But now it looked like I wouldn’t need it.
’Perfect.’
I believed in you, agents...!
The Supernatural Disaster Management Bureau really is different from that
damn psychopath potion company!
It was... actually kind of touching.
’This is the classic Disaster Management Bureau-style resolution I haven’t
seen since before the Dark Exploration Records took off...!’
Trying to save as many as possible, and actually succeeding in the end.
Maybe it was because I was in a child’s body, but my chest swelled with
emotion. Sniff.
Of course, this being a ghost story, about half the time these kinds of
attempts ended in total annihilation, but this time, things were going
smoothly.
Now all we had to do was time our escape together...
Tingle—
’...Huh?’
That’s when it happened.
A strange sensation began crawling up from my tail.
Tingle—
’Above?’
My head shot up.
...Beside me, a child in a blue dress muttered softly.
"Weird."
She was right.
"Weird."
No, it wasn’t just that one child.
All twenty-seven children standing near me lifted their heads to look into
the air.
Every single young mer-child... who still had their tails attached.
"The Mermaid Princess... is angry."
It seemed so.
All the hosts sensed something, from somewhere no one could pinpoint.
A threat to survival.
She was searching for where it had been triggered...
And now, she had found it.
The Mermaid Princess.
Tingle—
"Grapes-ie?"
"Right now."
A chill swept down my spine.
My mouth moved on its own, quickly.
"The Mermaid Princess is on her way."
BOOM.
The ceiling collapsed.
And hundreds of tumor masses began to surge downward.