It reads like a continuation of the last canvassing—fragmentary interviews lined up.
"That place is owned by a suspicious religious group."
So says a taxi driver in Ansan (a normal taxi; there are no security taxis in Ansan).
"Up to now they ran it relatively aboveboard, and they didn’t do proselytizing, so nobody paid attention. But lately the vibe’s off."
Park Gwangrim asked what he meant by “off.”
"One of our company’s drivers saw several trucks go in there. Not just trucks—those armored rigs only big conglomerates would field, you know? There’s no reason for anything like that to come into Ansan."
I smashed a few back in Sokcho, but armored trucks are pricey kit that only big firms like Yeonam or Helistic usually own.
I lifted my eyes from the notebook and stared at the [House of Healing] sunk in the dark.
"Dammit, what is this place even supposed to be?"
The people beyond that shabby wire are tied to a conglomerate?
I haven’t even read the section with internal details on the [House of Healing], but there’s too much ominous material already.
Don’t tell me this is a more important location than I thought.
Might be a spot I need to check even if it means overextending.
"And what—dismemberment? Organ trafficking?"
What kind of nonsense is that?
"Ah, Hyundeok."
I’m going to lose it.
I tapped the mask, anxious, and focused.
There’s protective magic on Jang Hyundeok’s body.
It’s not tracking magic, but at this distance I can at least get a rough read on his state.
Direction: straight ahead.
Within about one kilometer.
Status: calm.
"Seems like he’s there."
If something had happened to the enchanted subject—in other words, to Jang Hyundeok—I’d have known already.
Yet his status is still calm.
Not split in two, and nothing yanked out of his belly.
Granted, this spell wasn’t designed with “walking into a dangerous site” in mind, so it isn’t perfect, but for there to be a problem and yet...
‘No, more than that—it’s too calm.’
It feels like he’s sleeping in a comfortable room.
Just what are they doing?
Irritation. Anger. Nerves.
‘Should I stop wasting time and just force my way in?’
In the end I held the impatience down.
Memories from [Cthulhu World] flickered through my head.
[By pressing that button, you activated the grinder attached to your friend’s body!]
[Ahh—if you hadn’t done that there, your friend wouldn’t have become a monster. What a shame.]
[Your friend? Ah, you mean “this”?]
[We provided ample hints and warnings. You didn’t read them?]
This isn’t a normal game.
It’s made from abnormal malice and twisted mania. If you move without grasping the situation inside, you don’t know what will happen to you.
‘Right. It won’t even take five minutes to finish the notebook.’
I opened it again—there’s something odd tucked behind the page I was reading.
"What’s this?"
A twice-folded A4 sheet wedged into the notebook.
[shff]
Its contents...
"For a healthier, brighter, future humanity."
A snappy opener.
[Welcome to the House of Healing.
The House of Healing is a comprehensive childcare, convalescence, and care facility operated for your health and bright future.
The following are house rules you must read for your safe life here.
For the safety of child residents, adult residents may not approach the Hope Wing under any circumstances.
No matter what sounds you hear from the Hope Wing, you must never approach the Hope Wing.
- Do not disturb anyone who is sleeping.
This institution conducts special sleep therapy. Extended sleep is an essential and normal process for recovery of health.
Do not disturb other residents’ sleep, and ...]
More rules follow.
Don’t eat anything outside designated meals; don’t damage the garden; and so on.
One line in the middle stands out.
[6) Always smile.
You are not a useless person yet. Smiles will make you a better person.
For health, we operate “Smile Time.”
When the Smile Bell rings, let’s all smile happily.
If it’s hard to smile, or if you see someone who is not smiling, call the nearest volunteer or manager.]
"Wow. Love the vibe."
Obviously not really “love.”
"Damn."
I scrubbed my scalp and flipped back to Park Gwangrim’s notebook.
"Mr. Kim Sinhwa is a benefactor."
"One hundred billion as an advance. That’s an amount worth risking this for."
Benefactor, written with a word full of resolve.
He needed that resolve for a reason.
In the end, leveraging a few connections and quite a bit of money, Park Gwangrim apparently infiltrated the [House of Healing].
I hadn’t wanted him to push this hard.
He entered as a patient.
"Admission was simple. I only called, and they cheerfully told me I could come in today. Classic pattern. Once you’re in, you won’t be getting out."
Looks like there are at least three buildings beyond that fence.
Near the main gate, in the [Office Wing], he met the people who run the [House of Healing].
"Welcome. We’re glad you’re here. We’re going to help you."
People in white with name tags reading [Volunteer].
As a broker who’s worked out of Paju, Park Gwangrim sensed they were ability users above a certain level—or cultists.
Not combat types. If they have abilities, they’re probably support or brainwashing lines.
He immediately chewed and swallowed the capsule hidden in his mouth.
"Good thing I prepped a Brain Cooler."
Brain Cooler.
Expensive psychotropic that blocks brainwashing and mental magic, though it has side effects.
It isn’t absolute, but it will cover you against brainwashing below a certain threshold.
He leaned into the side effects—dizziness and nausea—to fake aftereffects of delirium, mania, phobias, auditory hallucinations, and babbling.
He knew exactly how washed-up problem-solvers look after pushing too hard, so he could imitate them cleanly.
"To my surprise, they received me with not even the bare minimum of suspicion."
He says their manner was overly warm and fervent.
"Don’t worry. You are not a useless person."
"Smiles and happiness will heal you."
"You are now going to receive a new use to help maintain this world—and be able to do something better than before."
"It was immense."
"To the point it felt like they were using the whole mountain as the grounds."
Guided with kindly warmth, he soon reached the Healing Wing.
Blossoms in gaudy colors blooming everywhere.
A deep-green lawn. Handsome trees. Gentle sunshine.
Patients basking and smiling in a space overflowing with nature’s vitality.
When they saw him, they came at him in a fever of greeting.
"Welcome!"
"Welcome!"
"Let’s be together!"
"Happy to meet you!"
From the description, it should conjure a peaceful, lovely scene, yet he says every part of it filled him with a chilling sense of wrongness and disgust.
"Too bright."
"Every last one wears a grotesquely distorted smile."
"Scary. Horrifying."
"They keep smiling."
"Why?"
"Some were problem-solvers I’d seen before."
"Red Lynx, Night Owl, JJ, Black Wind. They were all active in their own ways, then retired not long ago and disappeared."
He tried to talk to those he knew, but they only smiled with unfocused eyes. None could hold a conversation.
"I heard a strange sound in the distance."
"Children. Children’s laughter."
"Song." "Cheerful voices."
He asked the managers about the sounds, and thankfully got answers.
"That’s the sound of the little friends in the Hope Wing."
"Adults may not approach, to protect the children."
"Those children are indispensable to maintaining this world."
That last line is a little odd.
“Children are our future” is a common platitude, but he seems to have picked up a strange nuance there.
So he probed carefully—and got an even stranger answer.
"Too many people are dying, aren’t they? We are acting in the role of maintaining this world. You might call it outsourced work."
What are they talking about?
"Grandiose claims typical of a cult."
"Outsourcing? Ties to a conglomerate."
"Can I figure out who they’re connected to?"
"Those oddly colored flowers everywhere."
"Not normal plants."
"I’ve never seen anything this grotesque."
"Those ominous flowers grow inside the buildings, too."
He was shown inside, and was startled to find the flowers that bloomed everywhere outside were blooming indoors as well.
"They’re poison for adults. Do not eat them."
"Do not eat them. Absolutely do not eat them."
The warning not to eat them, repeated.
He said he wouldn’t eat them anyway—
"Of course. If you should happen to eat a flower, please let us know."
With a gentle smile, the manager said that.
"Even as I was hearing the warning, I saw someone sitting in the corridor tearing blossoms off the wall and devouring them."
Even so, the manager only smiled and said, "Oh dear," and did nothing else.
"I was assigned a room."
A field hospital.
That’s how his notebook describes it.
A space wider than a typical classroom, over twenty cots in a row, people lying there with virtually no privacy.
"There were beds smothered in flowers."
"Not just one—several. About a third."
"Amid hundreds of blooms, a human face."
"Heh heh, heh heh..."
Patients wreathed in flowers lay on their cots, leaking nasty little laughs.
"They aren’t covered by flowers. Flowers are growing from their bodies."
For a while there are incomprehensible scrawls and lines drawn with compulsive force.
Did he break into delirium?
Horrific doodles sprawled across multiple pages. Radial diagrams. A sketch of a flower?
[Flower] [Madmen] [Why are they smiling?]
[Lunch] [Sleeping people]
[Plant] [Weird song] [Tree] [Xswl]
[Dance?] [Rite?] [Flower] [Song]
[Occult act] [Red flower]
[Not normal.]
He was clearly writing in hiding, away from the managers’ eyes.
Meaning these notes were written some time after he saw them.
Either the mental enhancer he pre-dosed wore off—
Or perhaps just recalling the sight of people smiling while covered in flowers was enough to trigger delirium.
At length he seems to have calmed down a little; legible script returns.
"They spoke with expressions of genuine feeling."
"Isn’t it wonderful? That is the sleep therapy our House of Healing is so proud of."
"Through deep sleep, you can obtain new power and the miracle of healing."
"Do not eat those flowers."
"The Smile Bell rang."
"People started laughing."
"Tremendous confusion."
"Horrible."
"Feels like I’ll go insane."
Illegible scrawls again.
From this point, his record turns fragmentary and hard to follow.
I forced a reconstruction of what he wrote.
"Right. This is a chance."
Trapped among the maniacs erupting in mad laughter, he managed to rally and slipped to the Hope Wing in the confusion.
"There were children."
In the Hope Wing, children of varied ages ran about energetically, danced, and sang.
"Unlike the adults, the children don’t seem insane."
"Normal." "Ordinary kids."
"No—something’s off."
"Off."
"Wrong."
A belated sense of dissonance.
With a slightly trembling hand, he wrote the following:
"The children’s faces are the same."
Holding his shock and confusion down, he watched them again.
Varied ages, and each a different sex.
Look closely and there’s just enough individuality to tell them apart.
But all of them look similar, as if they’d gathered siblings born of the same womb into one place.
Like a single voice recorded and broadcast in unison, the same singing pours from every direction.
