Chapter Text
Baek Saheon thought to himself:
Where am I?
How long have I been here?
An empty space.
A bed. A bookshelf. A desk and a computer.
Nothing else.
Baek Saheon approached the desk and turned on the computer.
Apparently, it hadn't been turned off in the first place. The screen lit up, but it wasn’t showing the usual startup screen. A webpage was already open.
"Welcome to the Darkness Exploration Records, ■■■■■-nim!"
What the hell was this otaku-looking website?
Still, when you’re caught inside a darkness, it was better to not ignore a single clue. Baek Saheon clicked through the wiki and skimmed its structure.
…It really did seem to be about Darknesses. Was this some kind of internal company material?
He clicked on the page titled “Daydream Inc.”
And as he began reading—
"What is this?"
The document read like it had been written by an outsider mocking Daydream Inc.
A string of oddly immature sentences.
What the hell was this?
Skimming through the article in disbelief, Baek Saheon came across a section:
<List of Named Characters>
A list of names.
They seemed to be employee names.
One of them caught his eye…
Baek Saheon (Goat)
The text was blue and underlined—a hyperlink.
As if drawn by a trance, Baek Saheon reached for the link—
CLACK.
A door opened.
A door?
There was a door in this room?
Baek Saheon turned his head to face the figure who had opened the door.
A man of similar build to himself, wearing a black suit.
A presence that was so familiar to him that he was sick of it.
It was—
“—Mr.Goat! Wake up!”
Baek Saheon coughed and opened his eyes.
Someone was shouting at him. Their voice was trembling, nearly in tears.
“Come on, Mr.Goat, stay with me—just a little longer!”
A bison mask.
It was Jang Heoun.
In that moment, Baek Saheon remembered everything.
That’s right.
He was exploring a Darkness as part of Squad F, in a three-person unit with the squad leader and Bison.
It was a typical "survive in the dark" type of horror tale—if you could just hold out without dying for a set period, you could collect high-grade dream essence. He had stayed close to Bison, ready to use him as a bait in a pinch.
But then, suddenly, pain had stabbed through his abdomen—
Baek Saheon looked down.
Something that looked like a thick branch had pierced through his stomach.
…Had he passed out from the shock?
An hour later.
Having escaped the darkness with Bison’s assistance, Baek Saheon was resting in a recovery room bed.
Thanks to the potions, the wound in his abdomen had almost completely healed.
Lying there with nothing to do, the fact that he had nearly died hit him like a ton of bricks.
He had faced death many times before—but never this closely.
He had never lost consciousness or hallucinated until now.
Still, the fact that he had survived filled him with pride and relief.
Baek Saheon recalled something his mother had once said during his childhood.
What do people see when they’re about to die?
Most would think of something like a life flashing before their eyes, or a white light at the end of a tunnel.
But the story Baek Saheon had heard as a child was different.
His mother had said:
We—that is, everyone born in this village—when we’re on the brink of death, we’ll see Ireum-nim.
Your sister, too, in her final moments, would have seen Ireum-nim. What a blessing…
“Ha! Who’s seeing Ireum-nim?”
Baek Saheon felt an odd sense of liberation.
Because in what might have been his final moment, it wasn’t Ireum-nim that had come to his dreams.
He truly didn’t belong to Jisan Village anymore!
Baek Saheon smiled with a deep sense of satisfaction.
For just this one moment, he felt lucky to have that lunatic psychopath Kim Soleum for a roommate.