I took a shower for the first time in a long while.
I mean, it had really been ages since I showered in my original body.
My body stayed where it was without pulping or spilling.
The sensation of hot water skimming over my skin.
I was me.
“......”
I changed clothes.
It felt a little awkward to wear something that wasn’t a Security Team uniform.
A clean sense of reality—neither a body I was using temporarily nor a dream I was having asleep.
The feeling of breathing.
Phew.
...Light.
With that refreshed feeling, I opened the door of the ward and stepped out.
People who’d already gotten ready were waiting in the Fox Counseling Room’s seating area.
“Sorry I’m late. I had to wash up.”
Come to think of it, I was surprised this Fox Counseling Room even had a shower.... No, if there’s a ward then not having a shower would be the real ghost story.
Smiling, I took a seat.
The warmth of sunlight heating my face.
“...You don’t need to wear the Security Team uniform?”
“Yes.”
“I’m fine now.”
I truly was.
Relief and joy burst across Agent Choi’s face where he sat at the table.
Then he hugged me, as if to hearten me.
“Thank goodness.”
“......”
I felt a lump rise in my throat.
Then I watched Agent Choi, as usual, casually do a bit of dowsing to measure my contamination, confirm there was no problem, and put it away.
This guy is really consistent....
“Ahaha~ Well, last time it looked like you’d recovered too, and you hadn’t. ...I wondered if it was another similar situation.”
“That was... mm, a different body made with an item.”
The lizard body.
It’s still being kept at Section Chief Lee Jaheon’s quarters and should be asleep the whole time.
I didn’t even use it much—maybe a refund....
Obviously not, and it was a gift; if I tried that, I’d be on the fast track to getting blacklisted from VIP at the Cosmic Mall.
Honestly, I’d feel too guilty anyway.... Thanks to it, I was able to talk with people for a few days and even eat meat.
Anyway, I shook my head with a smile.
“I should be fine now. Going forward.”
If I keep accepting myself, I’ll be able to sit here as Kim Soleum.
“...Good.”
Relief deepened in Agent Choi’s eyes.
“Think Deputy Eun and the Bronze Agent stayed behind at that station?”
“Odds are good, right? «N.o.v.e.l.i.g.h.t» Since the free-for-all’s over, they probably slipped neatly back onto the train. I’ll go in and check, so Podo, you....”
“How moving. Mr. Noru. And you, Agent.”
“...!”
The person who’d been sitting silent at the table opened his mouth.
“Seems you had a very moving and edifying experience in Se-gwang Special City. Enviable, feeling that kind of emotion while you’re on the job.”
He smiled, looking straight at me.
And he, too, had plenty to say on this side.
“You even got your looks back, I see.”
.......
“Director Ho.”
“You can just call me Ho Yuwon, like earlier.”
Really?
“Then, Ho Yuwon.”
“......”
I stared at the smiling Ho Yuwon.
Calling a director like this made my scalp prickle, but if I kept using formal speech and tiptoeing around, the frame would snap back to “new hire and director.”
So even if cold sweat broke out in the flesh of a fresh grad, this was the right tone.
If you don’t like it, fire me.
No, please do. Not that you can, with the contract in Director Cheong’s hands.
...Somehow, since dropping in here, I keep meeting people I have to take the initiative with.
I spoke quietly.
The biggest question.
“I saw you in the Special City this time.”
“......!!”
Ho Yuwon’s face hardened.
“Do you know where I saw you?”
“...Hard to say.”
“The DMB branch.”
“......”
“It had been contaminated into a courthouse. They were sifting endlessly whom to rescue.”
“I...”
Ho Yuwon’s voice warps.
“I was there?”
The counseling room distorts.
“I was doing selection?”
“No.”
I shook my head.
“I helped them shut down the selection.”
“...!”
“And...”
I set my human hand on the table.
“In the end, it helped me get this form back.”
“......”
I looked at the Fox Counseling Room’s “counseling space” door.
I recalled the “counselor” who’d appeared in the window back when I was receiving counseling there.
—Mr. Kim Soleum.
The fox counselor who appeared with my face.
What I went through in the Scales Court was far rougher and more shocking than that, but....
“You appeared with my face and pointed out my interior.”
You could see that as a kind of counseling too.
“That being called itself ‘the projection that remains here.’”
“......”
“Ho Yuwon.”
I opened my mouth.
“Isn’t that what you were looking for in Se-gwang Special City?”
“......”
“Yourself.”
A part of himself, left behind in Se-gwang Special City.
I can infer it vividly because I nearly had similar experiences more than once.
The dangerous experience of trying to tear out contamination and, in the process, getting myself torn out wholesale so that my self and traits snapped off clean.
“I kept wondering why you yourself never infiltrated Se-gwang Special City.”
Now that I’m here, one inference occurs to me.
“Maybe a part of you is already in Se-gwang Special City, so you can’t also exist there as a separate being.”
If someone’s already inside, that person can’t go in again.
“......”
“Ho Yuwon. What you’re trying to find in Se-gwang Special City... is it a part of you?”
Ho Yuwon was silent for a long time.
From that body sitting blankly at the table as if frozen, a voice trickled out.
“No.”
......!
“Truly unfortunate, but you’re wrong.”
He lifted his head.
“What’s there isn’t a part of me.”
I looked at Ho Yuwon’s face, still smiling faintly.
No.
There’s definitely a connection.
“Yeah? How are you sure?”
“Well.”
“......”
I looked at Ho Yuwon.
—The projection that remains here.
Those words.
And even the principle of how it acts.
It’s definitely him.
.......
In that case.
Maybe—
I recalled the first thing I’d said.
“Not a part... you mean it’s you.”
“......!”
Ho Yuwon himself.
“You yourself are trapped in Se-gwang Special City, and what we’re seeing right now is....”
Suddenly I remembered.
How Director Ho would suddenly appear here and there in the shapes of all kinds of people.
How he puppeted Deputy Eun Haje’s body.
If so—
Maybe in a similar way...
The Ho Yuwon in front of me now as well....
“Are you, perhaps, a body being controlled by the person trapped in Se-gwang Special City?”
“......”
Silence fell over the Fox Counseling Room.
I looked at the being before me....
“That’s right.”
...!
Clap.
Ho Yuwon applauded and beamed.
“Yes. Just as you say, Mr. Noru... my side is the partial one.”
“......”
“No—hardly even a partial one. I’m a kind of stored remnant, a phantasm.”
I stared, blank.
A consciousness settled in someone else’s body.
“The real one is in Se-gwang Special City. What’s here now is just a fragmentary consciousness. Escaped to the outside....”
Ho Yuwon muttered like a madman talking to himself, as if he couldn’t hold back the words bursting out.
Or as if they were beyond his control.
“But did you know? Emotions and mental pain that are too intense sometimes take over the persona. What should have been a brief stay that fades can, instead, change a life forever....”
Ho Yuwon pointed to himself.
“That’s me.”
“......”
“A total, comprehensive, intense consciousness of ‘someone’ trapped in Se-gwang Special City made me into Ho Yuwon.”
And Ho Yuwon fixed Agent Choi with a strange stare.
“And I do know exactly why this happened....”
The Disaster Management Bureau.
Wait.
I had a bad feeling.
At the sight that made the back of my head throb and a chill shoot down my spine, I hurried to yank Ho Yuwon’s gaze back with a question.
Aggro!
The name I’d found during Ho Yuwon’s “reading” process.
And Brown’s words.
—Mr. Noru, I catch the scent of a plague on that person.
“What is Nine-Fox Disease?”
“......”
His eyes returned to me.
“Publicly asking about someone’s intimate morbidity like that... that’s really embarrassing and scary, Mr. Noru.”
“I never said you had it.”
“......”
“What kind of disease is it? Is it related to the nine tails of a gumiho? To the folk notion that a gumiho can disguise itself? And...”
I looked at him.
“Is it related to you suddenly popping out in that form from the bodies of unspecified people?”
“......”
A cool voice answered.
“That’s right. A person infected with Nine-Fox Disease... if they infect someone else with Nine-Fox Disease, they can live that life for a while as if it were their own.”
“......!”
“Is it hard to picture? If I say they become an avatar, would that be easier to understand?”
Ho Yuwon smiled.
As if he’d given up on something.
“So then, you can think of me as an avatar of someone trapped in Se-gwang Special City.”
“......”
“Who do you think I am? I remain here in a single state, and yet I can’t tell.”
I opened my mouth.
“Maybe a DMB agent, or a cooperating spirit-being....”
“Well.”
The corners of Ho Yuwon’s mouth twisted.
“I don’t remember. Hahaha....”
“...!”
“I don’t have structural, concrete memories. Only the consciousness is in here. I can only tell what I am by the emotions and perceptions that leap out unthinkingly.”
“......”
I lifted my head and looked around the counseling room.
“Do you know you did counseling, in that same way?”
“...!”
“Is that why you made this counseling room?”
“...Yes.”
A faint smile spread at the corner of Ho Yuwon’s mouth.
“I was a counselor. That much is absolutely certain.”
So, to avoid forgetting it—to avoid losing that feeling—did he make this place?
...How powerful is he?
In the first place, the fact that he became a director at Daydream even in that state wasn’t ordinary. I listened to the mutters spilling from him.
I knew the feelings there too.
A sense of release.
“There are a few intense things I just know. Perceptions and emotions close to identity, shall we say? Counseling, disaster, and....”
His gaze swung back.
“Selection.”
Agent Choi faced him, his expression rigid.
“That happened at two thirty-four in the afternoon.”
“......”
“Are you curious? If you want to know what it felt like, all you have to do is answer my questions from now o—”
“You said he was a good agent.”
“......”
“Isn’t he?”
“He is.”
Ho Yuwon turned his eyes back to me.
Relief and cold sweat chased each other up and down my spine; I felt like dying.
But I still couldn’t relax.
“Ah, and me going into Se-gwang Special City is hard in another sense too. I don’t sleep. Because if I sleep, I disappear, so I’ve become unable to sleep.”
“......”
“But it’s fine! It’ll all be over soon!”
In his eyes, joy and expectation seemed to whirl like madness.
“...All right, Ho Yuwon.”
“Yes.”
“I’ll check whether what I saw at Morning Station was really you.”
“...Yes.”
“But...”
I studied his face up close.
“Then what are you going to do.”
“......”
“If it is you, by what means are you going to extract yourself.”
“That’s what you’re supposed to figure o—”
“No. Our job was to find what you wanted inside Se-gwang Special City.”
“......”
Ho Yuwon’s eyes narrowed.
“So.”
“You won’t do it?”
“I asked if you had a method in mind.”
I almost dropped into a squat from fear.
“If you don’t, I’ll tell you mine.”
“Oh? What idea came to you?”
“To terminate the supernatural disaster in Se-gwang Special City.”
“......!!”
“Right? If the disaster ends, there’s no need to keep the lockdown, and naturally you’ll be released....”
“Excuse me? Hahaha....”
Ho Yuwon burst out laughing.
It didn’t sound like he was amused.
“Mr. Noru! There are hundreds of thousands who died like dogs in there—by what means exactly are you going to terminate that....”
You think someone wants to make that crazy attempt, to say this?
“Then by what means am I supposed to extract you?”
“......”
“Even our two exploration personnel are stuck in there dead right now. If it can be terminated, then terminating it’s good.”
And I can go home.
A win-win.
My desire to go home hasn’t changed.
To be honest, part of me still wanted to scream “Just let me go already! Give me the Daydream machine! Let me at least test if ending it works!” or bolt....
But now I know I don’t need to.
Looking at myself from multiple angles, I pressed those feelings down.
So I could say this a little less blindly, a little less scared.
“I’ll do my best. So you do your best too.”
“......”
“At least try.”
Ho Yuwon peered at me.
“Can you swear it?”
“I can swear.”
I rose from the table.
“But I’m not accepting your prohibition. That’s not really a vow, it’s a contract.”
“How cruel.... You even hired me at the Resort to forcibly tie me down.”
If you don’t like it, quit was on the tip of my tongue, but no matter how casual I got with my speech, that was too spine-tingling to say. I guess I’m not Deputy Eun Haje—I can’t do it....
Instead, I said this:
“Anyway. Shall we do it that way? Both of us give it our best.”
Like he was probing, Ho Yuwon stared at me silently, without a smile.
Then he slowly offered me his hand.
“Let’s.”
We shook on it.
Thus the official objective of the Se-gwang Special City exploration changed.
Termination of an Extermination-Class disaster.
***
After that, through a conversation with Ho Yuwon, I tweaked the compensation scheme as well.
—While we explore Se-gwang Special City, half of the Dream-solution our teammates pass to you. I want that as compensation.
That should leave enough volume to keep this project going.
...For the record, Agent Choi watched me silently the whole time I said it, but he didn’t say a word then.
Only later, when we left the Fox Counseling Room together, he said:
—...If that doesn’t look like a way home, give it up.
—.......
—Don’t stake your life on it. Got it?
I nodded.
Maybe because he’d confirmed I wasn’t severely contaminated and was emotionally a bit more stable than before, or maybe because he was thinking something else—I didn’t feel the hostile wariness toward Agent Choi I used to.
It was just hard....
—Hm? Do you pity our team’s manpower shortage? Then come back, Podo?
Please.
I nearly blurted yes out of guilt.
We need to rescue those two fast....
I accepted the anxiety and unease welling up again. Honestly, if two acquaintances are stuck dead in a disaster, of course you feel this way.
Conversely, given the nature of Se-gwang Special City, the fact that the seriousness keeps fading from my mind is itself frightening.
But I just have to do my job calmly without being crushed by all of it.
And that brings me here.
“Thank you, Section Chief.”
Instead of the Fox Counseling Room, I asked leave and went to Section Chief Lee Jaheon’s quarters.
I wanted to sit at a familiar-layout desk and think, like before.
Like when I was originally a Daydream new hire.
For the record, Section Chief Lee identified me without any particular agitation at my return to my original form.
A truly consistent lizard....
Mm, in a good way.
“May I use this?”
“Yes.”
And gratefully, I’m thinking now at this desk.
Recalling the info, risks, and methods I originally knew... how I’m going to end Se-gwang Special City’s ghost stories and go home.
If I go by Lee Kangheon’s note for a start...
I have to divert a Daydream machine.
And then something occurred to me.
[What splendid plan is that, Mr. Noru?]
“I’m going to mobilize my entire Daydream network.”
I declared solemnly.
“I’m going to steal the applicant files for Research Team candidates.”
[...Hm?]
—The entire Research Team must have gone missing.
—Right. I suppose you met them inside the Special City.
Then one procedure will naturally follow.
“New personnel intake.”
Right.
They’ll recruit new researchers.
For the record, I don’t even need the list of successful candidates.
“I only need to see who’s going to pass.”
If I can find the names that were in the Darkness Exploration Record, that’s enough, isn’t it.
“And...”
Never put all your eggs in one basket.
Ho Yuwon will certainly try to divert a Daydream Dream machine, but...
He’ll be under Director Cheong’s constant check, and with the entire Research Team missing, diverting a machine might stand out too much.
In that case, we need a pincer attack.
To draw aggro for each other.
“Up we go.”
Thus, I made up my mind.
“I’ll open one more route for diverting a Daydream machine.”
With things the way they are, I’ll grant a researcher a life without ghost stories—just briefly.
I’ll be a one-day researcher...!
