Chapter 231: Ch 231: The truth about Jang Heowoon
The silence that had settled inside the elevator pulled down like a weight as
the space descended.
Downward.
Into an abyss of unmeasurable depth.
To Basement Floor 96.
"...You pressed it, didn’t you?"
Yes, that’s right.
I’d chosen the option that plunged us into the distant depths of the ghost
story, an incomprehensible, unfathomable deep layer.
...It would be a lie to say I didn’t hesitate.
I’m not confident I could face that incubator I came from and keep my wits
about me.
But...
’Put another way, I’m not afraid of anything else.’
Right now I can’t feel fear. If Braun is right and my emotions slowly come
back like my rationality has, then from that point on, every time I explore
the Cheerful Research Institute’s underground, I’ll tremble in terror.
’Maybe it’s better to understand what I can before that happens.’
A sort of preventive injection.
[Ah, an effect of removing fear through repetition. A classic, validated
learning method...]
[However, there’s an entirely unexpected variable at your side.]
Ho Yoowon.
[That might be part of the thrill of a live broadcast, but if it’s
uncomfortable, why not leave him behind? If you need this host’s help, I’ll
pitch in a little!]
...
No. For now I’ll bring him along.
[Hmm?]
’It’s the employee ID he’s wearing that bothers me.’
The Cheerful Research Institute employee badge hung from Ho Yoowon’s
neck.
I glanced at it again.
Amazingly, I’d already seen an object of exactly this type before.
It was the card key the dead employee had carried in the underground
dream incubator where the prototype incubator was located.
The part with the name and ’Cheerful’ had been roughly crossed out with a
pen. That’s what I had used to activate the incubator.
It’s probably still stuck in that incubator... unless someone else took it.
’...Even so, I’m not sure I could retrieve it.’
In any case, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to observe what effect exactly this
badge has within this Cheerful Research Institute ghost story.
Ho Yoowon met my eyes and, after a brief look of surprise at my pressing
the button without hesitation, his smile returned.
His face was still busted and swollen.
"You startled me. Roe Deer-nim. How brave of you."
...
"You’ve got courage, so you’ll do well exploring, right? I’ll follow
faithfully."
What a seriously irritating prick.
I ignored him.
The elevator’s floor numbers had been plunging alarmingly fast, and finally,
they reached the destination.
Cheerful Researcher
■■■
Basement Floor 96.
Ding-dong. The door opened with the same cheery chime...
And.
A peaceful corridor came into view.
"..."
From the offices came occasional laughter or the light clack of keyboards,
but that was all.
It looked perfectly normal, as if we’d come back up to Basement Floor 2.
Utterly ordinary.
Which made it even stranger.
This can’t be right.
"Roe Deer-nim?"
...
"Roe Deer-nim, aren’t you getting off? It’s an ordinary office corridor...
Are you scared? If you’re really frightened, cover your eyes. I can give you
a little push..."
Warning 1
Reason : Obstruction of duties (intentional)
Cumulative warnings : 1 / Strikes left until disciplinary action : 2
"Pardon? I was only trying to help... this is so sad."
Huu.
"And I worry you might not be able to carry out discipline properly. You
failed earlier, didn’t you..."
Proof of successful disciplinary action
: Check your own left cheek
Only then did he quiet down.
’Please just shut your mouth...’
Why is half his face still like that after being smashed?
Anyway, I moved forward, mindful of dust on the floor and any presence at
the office doors.
I stepped out of the elevator.
Step, step.
I kept my footsteps as quiet as possible. No fear, but I remained vigilant.
I wrapped the smoke thickly around me.
’There’s definitely something here.’
I walked slowly to the end of the corridor.
...
But in the peaceful, sunset-lit corridor of the Cheerful Research Institute...
there was nothing odd at all.
Just a quiet office hallway.
"Really strange... isn’t it?"
I gripped the handle of the office door where there was the least sign of life.
"Ah. Shall we go into that office? But inside there might be—"
Ho Yoowon and I turned our heads at the same time.
But there was no one speaking to us.
Instead, at the far end beside the elevator, one wide-open door could be
seen...
An emergency exit.
From deep inside the dark emergency stairwell, with no windows and only
the glow of an emergency light, something was coming out into the
hallway...
Fire.
Flames poured from the stairwell into the office corridor.
"...!!"
A shrill alarm began blaring through the hallway.
And all the office doors swung open.
"Ah."
I pressed myself flat against the wall at once. Beyond me, Ho Yoowon too
had pressed his back tightly against the corner.
From the offices, countless presences came rushing out all at once.
The residents of the Cheerful Research Institute, unseen by explorers.
[Normally, in the event of a fire, the basic safety protocol is to use the
stairs. But...]
[This time, that place has become a passage leading straight to death!]
That’s right.
The footsteps of those who could no longer escape through the emergency
exit reverberated with confusion, fear, panic...
Some rattled window frames as if desperately trying to pry them open,
others clattered faucets as though bravely fetching water from the restroom
to fight the flames.
But most followed instinct.
[Oh! They’ve run to the elevators!]
Ding-dong.
The elevator doors opened, followed by the rough, crashing sounds of
bodies cramming inside.
The warning chime was drowned out by the elevator’s announcement.
—Capacity has been exceeded. Capacity has been exceeded...
Where could that thing even go?
No, would it even be able to depart safely?
The doors refused to close.
I didn’t need to see it to imagine.
The researchers of the Cheerful Research Institute swarming the elevator,
jamming the doors, the weight overload setting off alarms.
Then suffocating to death there, or burning alive.
And then...
I soon realized there was no need to imagine at all.
Thud.
It began with a single one.
But as time passed, they multiplied exponentially. Two, five, eight,
fifteen...
The dead researchers of the Cheerful Research Institute.
They began to appear, filling the corridor and elevator.
’The dead are...’
Judged as objects.
And those corpses of ’Cheerful Research Institute entities’, once recorded
in exploration logs as unknown beings that caused disappearance upon
mere contact, now looked... no different than ordinary people.
Broken nails clawing at elevator doors.
Disheveled hair.
Two in lab coats collapsing together in the hallway, burning, one having
tried to cover the other’s mouthpiece.
Every last one.
Until the moment of death.
"Roe Deer-nim."
...
"You see them, don’t you? You do see them."
Ho Yoowon frowned slightly, smiling with feigned pity.
"How unfortunate. Don’t you agree?"
...
"But congratulations, all the same. You chose a good floor. From now on,
traveling through the 96th floor will be much easier."
That was when I realized I had recovered one more emotion.
Aversion.
Even with this body that no longer suffered from poisonous gas or searing
heat, I stood there quietly, enduring that wave of aversion...
Together with the likewise-unharmed counselor of the Fox Counseling
Room.
Chiiiiik.
The sprinklers finally activated.
But what poured down was strangely black water.
The stench of iron and brine, like fresh blood, reeked from it.
The black water subdued the flames along the hallway a little, and the
charred office doors collapsed out into the corridor.
The smoke eased slightly.
"Cough."
A cough came from Ho Yoowon.
It was almost ostentatious, but when I turned my head, his hair wasn’t even
singed.
Perfectly intact, impossible to believe of someone who had inhaled toxic
smoke and stood inside a firestorm.
I asked the ghost story a question.
Question : The sounds made by those evacuating
"Well, I’m sorry, but my hearing is poor... And besides, I think they’ve all
died already."
...
Warning 2
Reason : Non-cooperation
Cumulative warnings : 2 / Strikes left until disciplinary action : 1
"You’re too harsh..."
Do as you please.
I pulled myself away from the wall and stepped into the incident unfolding
within the Cheerful Research Institute.
Squelch.
...Something crushed wetly beneath my steps on the sticky corridor floor.
[Huu, my friend’s feet stepping on such a filthy floor.]
Doesn’t matter. It isn’t frightening.
’Where should I start?’
I looked at the burning Cheerful Research Institute, its shattered windows
and charred walls exposing the interior...
A view thrown wide open, almost like a single vast chamber.
So my eyes immediately fell on it.
There, behind a collapsed right-side wall and a door torn loose by the
flames.
A transparent cylindrical apparatus...
It’s a Dream Incubator.
There was a Dream Incubator here.
I, I, I-I-I, I had to check it I think I had to but it’s
hardbecausemybodyisinsidetheincubator
"Roe Deer-nim."
Roe Deer?
"It doesn’t seem to be the incubator that you were born from, Roe Deer-
nim."
...
Ah.
"It’s broken."
I staggered and straightened myself up.
At some point, I had nearly collapsed to the floor.
Beside me, Ho Yoowon was brushing ash from his hair and fixing his
clothes. He kindly inclined his head and reached out his hand to me.
"You sat down. You must have a lot on your mind."
I stood up without taking that hand.
Ho Yoowon looked at me with a face that seemed disappointed, though I
already knew he felt no such thing.
Instead, watching as the flames left in the corridor slowly began to spread
again, he asked,
"Ah. Were you perhaps worried that those flames might ride the elevator
and spread to other floors?"
...
Negative
No.
I had never worried about such a thing.
From the start, the floors aren’t connected. Because...
Reason : Separate timelines
"...!"
That’s right.
Do you remember? Each floor of the Cheerful Research Institute is an
identical structure.
Identical enough that even certain marks on the walls match.
This was something the sergeant had once said. And with it, his speculation.
"Ah. You knew up to that point?"
No.
In truth, it doesn’t stop there...
– The same exact office... the same layout, even the same scratches, so it
must be the same place, but... maybe... each one is a slightly different
time...?
Using that testimony, I had also formed a hypothesis before entering.
[Indeed!]
If all the underground floors here are projections of the same space at
different points in time.
And if that space was part of the Cheerful Research Institute.
Then as you go deeper underground, it’s not simply that the scenery grows
stranger...
’The deeper you go, the more important moments of the Cheerful Research
Institute will appear.’
[Hooh.]
The trend is clear.
First, the Lower Levels.
’The Institute here shows timeframes when few people are present, or when
it’s oddly outside working hours.’
Lunchtime, vacation season, after work.
’But the further down you go, the more work-related keywords appear.’
In the Middle Levels, the nuance is explicit. Celebration, debate... And the
number of people increases as well.
So what of the deeper levels, the innermost floors?
Looking at the trend, the answer shows itself.
’Moments more strongly tied to work. Critical moments will appear.’
The key events of the Cheerful Research Institute’s operations.
Which means I can speculate about this situation as well.
[This fire is a very important event tied to the operations of that toy shop...]
[Is that what you’re saying, Friend?]
That’s right.
And we already know well what kind of work the Cheerful Research
Institute was engaged in.
’The development of ghost-story merchandise for play.’
It would make no sense for a place like that to collapse this far because of
an ordinary fire.
Which means this fire might not be natural at all, but itself a ghost story.
An incident monumental enough to decide the fate of the Cheerful Research
Institute.
And remembering the Institute’s experimental logs that summoned me...
This would be Cheerful Research Institute’s final
project.
Chances are high that it’s closely tied to the very reason I was summoned.
’Remember this.’
I steadied myself with a deep mental breath, then slowly stepped toward the
broken Dream Incubator.
Reaching toward the slot I recalled in my memory...
The card key register point of the incubator.
Clack.
The card key slid free of the slot, revealing itself as an intact employee
badge...
Cheerful Researcher
Lee Heowoon
...
What?
"Oh? The name is the same as the employee who was sent to the Disaster
Management Bureau. That was Jang Heowoon-ssi, wasn’t it?"
I turned my head.
"And it’s also the same as this year’s new hire. Right? That was Kim
Heowoon-ssi, wasn’t it?"
Ho Yoowon was smiling.
...And I realized.
The one who knew better than anyone the whereabouts of the spy
dispatched to the Supernatural Disaster Management Bureau, and could
make contact.
The one who had access to the profiles of every new Field Exploration
Team recruit this year.
The one with no need to worry about being handed over to Director
Cheong.
"What a fascinating phenomenon... Do you have something you’d like to
ask me, Roe Deer-nim?"
Right before me was the route to uncover the truth about Jang Heowoon-ssi.