Chapter 26

After I became the last person to escape that insane theme park...

“Roe Deer!”

“Holy shit, Roe Deer made it out!!”

My teammates gave me a rapturous welcome when I ran into them at the elevator.

As it turned out, they had been panicking and were even trying to contact civilian survivors to find out what on earth had happened.

“We thought we'd pick their brains about their experiences, at least. Anyway, thank goodness you got out safely.”

Team D's deputy looked considerably brighter.

“What happened, anyway? What took you so long?”

Hmm.

Before answering, I raised my arm and rubbed the back of my neck, deliberately turning my wrist outward so they could clearly see the mark left after the Membership burned away.

: Socius :

“...”

“...”

“Roe Deer?”

“Oh, I'm sorry. I just... I'm exhausted.”

“Ah.”

The deputy and supervisor simply nodded, saying that was understandable after all the shit I'd been through.

That was when I realized.

'They can't see it.'

No reaction at all.

This tattoo was invisible to them.

That wasn't a particularly good sign.

After a very brief moment of deliberation, I spoke.

“The reason I was late... The exit gate actually lost power right in front of me. I waited, but it didn't get fixed, so I found another way out.”

“What?!”

I deliberately left out the part about my bracelet turning into a Membership.

In this lunatic ghost-story company, announcing that something abnormal had attached itself to my body wasn't a particularly wise move.

'Let's leave out the talking stuffed doll, too.'

Of course, I'd explained everything else without leaving anything out, so registering the exploration log and making a manual should be no problem.

“... Wait. So... you went to the Yellow Zone, but the gates there were off too, so you turned one on yourself and came out? By opening the distribution panel?”

“Yes.”

“What even are you...?”

“Oh, come on. Just an ordinary roe deer.”

“Hmm... True enough.”

“...??”

Anyway, things grew quite warm and friendly.

“Your points will be credited tomorrow. Don't be shocked, but they're saying the amount could be close to ten thousand this time.”

“Amazing, right?!”

In fact, my coming back alive must have reduced their shares of the points.

My two seniors grinned at me. Neither had even washed up yet, apparently too busy running around worrying about whether I was alive.

Honestly, I was grateful.

Even a little touched. Far more warmth than this company deserved.

But one person was missing.

“By the way, where is our team leader?”

The deputy looked away.

“... The team manager called him in.”

Yikes.

“It's fine. He'll get an earful, and that'll be that. I mean, honestly, didn't that mantis-mask bastard from Team A practically kill himself?”

Still, he seemed to have really gotten on Team A's leader's bad side.

I recalled the mallard mask glaring daggers at Lizard.

Even the supervisor started whispering.

“Deputy, is that really true?”

“What?”

“That our leader has more than enough results to join an Elite Team, but he keeps getting passed over because of that personality of his, so he's stuck in Team D...”

“Yeah. Probably true.”

The deputy folded their arms.

“But he's always been like that. Just leave him be.”

“...”

“Maybe God really is fair. Giving our leader that face and that personality...”

“Shhh. He's a good boss, isn't he?”

A lizard's face and a lizard's personality?

Well, by now I could understand and agree to some extent that he was a good boss.

Especially since I'd just witnessed the worst kind of boss up close.

“Oh, the research team's section chief.”

Kwak Jegang, Research Team 1's section chief, who had impulsively shoved his own teammate into a ghost story without warning and ultimately gotten him killed.

“That man crossed the line.”

Apparently, when questioned, he was insisting that he, too, had panicked and thrown the game piece to the researcher by mistake.

'It was blatantly, wholeheartedly deliberate, though...'

Every Field Exploration Team employee there would remember that wasn't how it had happened.

The problem was that no one was particularly inclined to testify forcefully on behalf of the dead gambling-addict researcher.

Just look at the higher-ups whose words carried weight.

“Team A's leader is seeing red over our leader, and ours probably doesn't even realize the research team's section chief is someone he should be concerned about.”

The expectation was that it would all fizzle out, with a token pay cut or something of the sort.

At a company where the value of an employee's life depended on their performance, the accidental death of one ordinary employee who hadn't been worth his salary apparently wasn't grounds for seriously disciplining a section chief.

'So this is how Researcher Kwak Jegang kept appearing in <Records of Dark Exploration>...'

One serious misstep would clearly leave him fucked, but he seemed perceptive enough to slither clear of that one fatal mistake.

My Team D superiors clicked their tongues, saying a few of the eerie rumors about Kwak Jegang must have been true.

“I don't want to keep working with that guy, but he's had his little fit now. He'll probably behave until next quarter.”

“Right? Otherwise he'd have been fired already.”

Their disregard for danger was exactly what you'd expect from people willing to risk their lives working at a ghost-story company.

'I agree to some extent... but honestly, I think Kwak Jegang was trying to kill all of us, not his researcher.'

The researcher had merely been a disruptive variable meant to make that happen.

But with all of us escaping safely, that part had become obscured. It felt strange.

'I'll have to keep watching him.'

I made plans to go back through the entire <Records of Dark Exploration> wiki page featuring Kwak Jegang.

“Whew. What a long day.”

“Seriously.”

The conversation wound down.

Since there was no telling when Team Leader Lee Jaheon would return, I was given permission to head home.

The deputy grinned.

“There's nothing else you need to do. We hadn't registered you as missing yet. We thought we could find you. ... Good thing we didn't.”

“Right! We kept telling each other you'd definitely make it out, Roe Deer!”

“Go on home and rest.”

“... Thank you.”

“Oh, no need for that.”

With well-wishes along the lines of “Look forward to those points tomorrow,” I parted ways with my superiors.

I returned to Research Team 1's office to collect my things and head home.

And on the way, I encountered another familiar face.

“Mr. Jang Heoun.”

“...! Soleum!”

Team Y's recruit.

With everyone else in his team dead, he seemed to have been pushed aside amid everything else. He was sitting blankly in Research Team 1's office.

His shoulder had healed, but he was still wearing his bloodstained clothes.

“You're safe! Thank goodness...”

“Yes, thank you.”

I sat across from him for a brief chat.

Jang Heoun looked somewhat pale, perhaps from blood loss, but actually seemed less gloomy.

Calling him lucky felt wrong when everyone else in his team had died, but...

I recalled what my superiors had quietly told me earlier.

[“Oh, that Team Y recruit handled himself well this time. I think the higher-ups will be talking about him. B-grade is a high grade, after all.”]

[“If he works for about three months without any problems, there's a good chance they'll move him out as a regular employee!”]

All well and good.

The question was whether he could survive those three months...

“Um, have you ever considered resigning? Your current situation seems far too dangerous...”

“No.”

His answer was firm.

Still wearing his cow mask, Team Y recruit Jang Heoun clenched both fists.

“I absolutely need a Wish Coupon. I can't resign.”

“...”

He seemed to have his own story, too.

“In that case, I wish you all the best.”

After wrestling with myself, I finally added,

“Three months.”

“Pardon?”

“If you can hold on for three months, there's a good chance you'll be reassigned.”

Enduring something with a set deadline was a completely different burden from enduring it indefinitely.

That would apply to motivation, too.

“...!”

A light came into Jang Heoun's eyes.

“Yes, yes... I'll do my best to hold on...!”

He looked up at the ceiling and took a few deep breaths, then bowed his head.

“You helped me so much today. I... next time, in three months, I'll work hard to make sure I can help you in return.”

“Not at all. I made it out safely thanks to you, too. Thank you.”

I shook his hand.

Then, moved by sympathy and empathy, I spoke without thinking.

“You really went through a lot. You must have been terrified.”

“Pardon?”

A puzzled look flitted across Jang Heoun's face.

Huh...?

“Oh, I'm fine. I've nearly died a few times before...”

“... That too, but you also saw a lot of disturbing things.”

“Oh, right.”

Jang Heoun looked sheepish.

“I'm not good with blood and organs and things... I kept fainting or having my legs give out.”

“... I see.”

Wait a minute.

He'd just narrowed the scope of “disturbing things” considerably...

'Don't tell me.'

“... Heoun, are you perhaps... fine with ghosts and supernatural phenomena?”

“Oh, oh, yes! Those don't bother me!”

“...”

“I tend to just take them as they are, yes. Unless someone actually gets badly hurt or something, I don't feel much about them.”

“...”

He wasn't... a scaredy-cat?

“Thank you for worrying about m—oh, right! Soleum, have you talked to that person in the new recruits' group chat... Uh. Y-you're not in it.”

There was... a new recruits' group chat?

* * *

He wasn't my fellow member of the cowards' refuge.

... And my fellow recruits had a group chat without me!

“Hah.”

Deeply unsettled, I returned to my company-provided apartment and took a shower.

Those two shocking truths left me reeling.

'What a long day...'

The traitor... no, Mr. Jang Heoun had given me the link to the recruits' group chat, so I ought to join, but that could wait a little.

Something else took priority.

“I should check the tattoo on my wrist first.”

Several possible avenues came to mind, but there happened to be someone I could readily ask.

'Good Friend.'

Sitting on the edge of my bed, I took the stuffed keychain out of my suit's breast pocket.

Then I called out.

“Braun?”

But there was no answer.

'As expected.'

It was supposed to look like an ordinary doll once I returned from a ghost story to reality.

* * *

Good Friend will accompany you in your daily life like a shy doll.

Treat it properly.

It remembers everything.

* * *

In other words, it hadn't been tactfully keeping quiet while watching me talk to people at work. It genuinely couldn't speak.

But there was a way to talk to Good Friend even outside a ghost story.

'... Make reality like a ghost story.'

I recalled a method described in <Records of Dark Exploration>.

* * *

Talking to “Good Friend”

#1 Use darkness, a lighter, and shadows.

* * *

Honestly, it was a little creepy, but let's give it a try.

I bent down to look under the bed.

Then I sat Good Friend against the inner side of the back right bed leg.

'Next... light.'

I'd quit smoking a long time ago and didn't have a lighter, so I substituted my phone's flashlight.

I set it on the floor with its narrow beam aimed at the bed leg, then turned off the room's lights.

CLICK.

Then I sat on the bed in the darkness.

'... This is a little scary.'

A chill ran down my back. Time to pull the covers over me.

Nothing to be embarrassed about. I was alone.

'... Though I probably won't be for much longer.'

When I looked up, the flashlight shone out from beneath the bed, casting a giant stuffed doll's shadow on the wall.

“...”

Soon, the shadow of the doll leaning against the bed leg began to sway along with the light.

As if stirring awake.

Watch it with bated breath, and soon you would hear it.

A voice that sounded almost like a hallucination.

“My friend.”

“... Braun.”

The Host had awakened.

“Ah, you made it safely out of that bizarre theme park! Congratulations.”

“Thank you.”

As though replaying a tape, Braun seemed to recall at least the broad strokes of what had happened to me since leaving the ghost story.

'So that's what remembering everything meant.'

“Yes, you've finished work, my friend. Have you come home to rest now? Oh, what a cozy place!”

“Thank you.”

It wasn't my home, though. It was company housing.

“Hmm, come to think of it, you seem to speak far too formally to me, Mr. Roe Deer! A friend needn't do that.”

“... You seem to speak rather formally yourself, Braun.”

“Haha, I can't help it. An occupational hazard, you might say!”

I swallowed the words, “I don't think I can help it either, thanks to the occupational hazards of being a new hire at an insane ghost-story company.”

The closer we became, the safer and more powerful this stuffed doll would be.

“... All right. I'll relax from now on. We're friends, after all.”

“Oh, wonderful!”

The doll's shadow swayed as though nodding happily.

Good... Now, down to business.

“As it happens, I've got something to ask my friend.”

“Oh! Then why don't we take turns asking each other questions? But we must answer.”

“Like a game. This should be fun...”

Stop acting like a ghost story!

“Sure. Sounds fun.”

But I forced myself to answer enthusiastically.

This felt like working overtime... Hang in there.

“This is what I wanted to ask about.”

I promptly raised my left hand and lowered it beneath the bed, putting the tattoo-like black lettering on the inside of my wrist right in front of the doll's face.

“The Membership bracelet burned away and left this mark.”

A brief silence.

Then...

“This is... Latin. Ho.”

A strange fascination and absorption crept into his tone.

His voice dropped.

“Socius.”

“It was used to mean things like companion, member, or kinsman. Such versatility Latin has!”

“I know that much.”

I'd looked it up in an online dictionary on the way home, after all.

A Membership bracelet burning away to leave an inscription meaning “member” did seem connected, but this was the more important part.

“But other people don't seem to see it. Why do you think that is?”

“Oh dear, they must all have poor eyesight! I can see it perfectly clearly.”

Meaning creatures from ghost stories could see it.

“Glad you can see it clearly.”

I changed my question.

“Then what do these letters do?”

“It's a mark that grants you privileges.”

The answer came without hesitation, in a cheerful tone.

“Sometimes distinguished guests attend talk shows as audience members, don't they? They invariably have splendid markers that set them apart from the rest of the audience. Name tags or badges, for instance!”

“Those ‘superior markers’ come with special seating, access to rehearsals, backstage privileges, and the like!”

I reflexively raised my arm to inspect the lettering.

“... So this is some kind of ‘special privilege’?”

“Well, to the theme park mascot, at any rate.”

Braun sounded indifferent now.

“That overly emotional mascot seems far too familiar with you, Mr. Roe Deer. Well, next time you visit, let's at least use it to get a welcome drink!”

I never wanted to visit again.

But I nodded in agreement to show I was being cooperative.

“Excellent, excellent!”

'Getting along with people is fucking exhausting...'

Anyway, while “granting privileges” was abstract, it didn't sound particularly bad.

'Next time I enter a ghost story, I should check whether there's anywhere I can use it.'

The shadow of the doll's head bobbed a few times as though excited, then it whispered softly.

“Do you know something?”

What?

“Mr. Roe Deer, you just asked two questions.”

“That's against the rules.”

Goosebumps prickled across my back.

“Haha, it's all right. Isn't occasionally breaking the rules part of the charm of a close relationship?”

Whew.

“... Right. Thanks.”

“Don't mention it!”

“At any rate, it's my turn to ask a question now.”

I swallowed, staring at the enormous doll's shadow on the wall.

“What do you want to know?”

Braun whispered.

“Who lives in the room next to yours?”

It was a question I hadn't anticipated at all.

And of course, the person currently in the next room of this company apartment was...

“... A coworker.”

Baek Saheon.

“Are you close?”

Not in the slightest.

“He's just a coworker.”

“Ah, I see. Yes... Good.”

Braun's voice turned cheerful again.

“My friend. You'd best stop concerning yourself with that ‘coworker’ in the next room!”

“Why?”

“Because he'll be dead soon!”