Chapter Text
If a blind man can differentiate a sphere and a cube by touch, could he, if given the ability to see, distinguish those objects by sight alone before he touched them?
Such a question, first posed by William Molyneux in 1688, concerns the relationship between perception and knowledge. More specifically, it asks whether information learned through one sense can be recognized through the other without prior experience connecting the two.
Though the thought has sparked philosophical debate, the general consensus is that he could not—Locke argued that the newly sighted eye would only perceive a chaotic landscape of meaningless gradients, shadows, and the bleeding vitality of colours, entirely divorced from the comforting tactile map the hands had spent a lifetime tracing in the dark.
The reasoning behind it all is deceptively simple—sight and touch do not describe the world in the same manner. Through touch, one learns curvature, edges, texture, and resistance of a matter; through sight, one perceives shape, depth, distance, and colour.
A cube does not look "sharp" and a sphere does not look "round" until their fingers are allowed to trace the surfaces. After all, the brain does not automatically inherit familiarity—it must first learn to map the flood of visual data onto the world it already knows, leaving a haunting interval where a person is forced to look directly at something they understand intimately yet find utterly unrecognizable.
It is a gap bridged only by repetition, a silent stitching between two entirely separate perceptions. If a sphere recognized by touch and a sphere recognized by sight are not immediately understood as the same thing, then what exactly allows them to become the same thing later? At what point does resemblance become identity? How many times must an object be perceived before the mind decides that its various impressions belong to a single, coherent reality?
The problem itself begets a concern far less tangible—the assumption that recognition is evidence of understanding. It asks whether we truly perceive the world as it is, or whether we merely learn to stitch together separate impressions until they resemble certainty.
Yet, what truly defines certainty? Should the moment come certainty ceases to be familiar, will we recognize the shapes standing in front of us, or will we be left staring at the reality we no longer understand?
"Whoa, people these days still do that?"
A hand waved a half-eaten convenience store egg sandwich toward the concrete pillar, the plastic wrapping crinkling loudly in the stagnant heat of the afternoon that pressed down almost unbearably on you.
"Do what?" You glance up from your phone, eyes blinking back to focus as you track the direction of the sandwich.
"That." A finger pointed at a faded flyer flapping listlessly against the stone. "You know, the little tear-off number things."
Sure enough, nestled between private tutoring advertisements and apartment listings was a plain sheet of paper. It is a cheap, monochromic photocopy, the edges already curling and yellowing under the relentless glare of the sun. The layout is aggressively amateurish from a graphic design perspective—the font is a generic, slightly pixelated sans-serif that has bled during a low-ink print run, making the letters look faintly bloated.
It doesn't help that the title is dyed in a vivid, stunning red too—you can concede that it certainly catches the eye of passersby, but that is solely because of how irritatingly bold and obnoxious the colour is.
SURVEY PARTICIPANTS NEEDED
Have 5 minutes to spare? Researchers are currently gathering responses through a 5-minute phone survey on urban spatial awareness.
No personal identifications required, participant will be anonymous.
Financial compensation is provided upon verification.
At the bottom, the paper has been sliced into narrow, dangling vertical strips, each bearing a printed phone number. A few have already been torn away by random passersby, leaving jagged gaps that look like uneven teeth.
"To be fair, they're practical." You shrug absentmindedly. "If someone needs a little extra cash, they can just grab a tab and go."
It's not every day you can get money that easily.
Your friend snorts in response, crumpling the plastic wrapper of the sandwich into a tight ball. "Yeah, right, assuming the number doesn't just connect you to some bot farm or a premium line that hacks your information in 3 seconds flat."
"Pretty sure that's not how phone calls work."
"That's exactly what someone who's about to get their information stolen would say."
You roll your eyes, but your fingers stretch out anyway. The paper tears away with little resistance, though the quiet rip feels oddly loud against the hum of the midday traffic. Your fingers momentarily fiddle with the strip of paper before slipping it into your pockets, probably left to rot until you remember its existence just right before your clothes get dumped in the laundry basket.
"See? Evidence number one," your friend points out, throwing the crumpled wrapper into a nearby trash bin. "You're already under its spell now. Don't you know that's exactly the thing that gets people killed in a horror movie?"
You raise your eyebrows, an amused grin crawling its way on your lips. "Oh, definitely, because a monster is for sure gonna hunt me down through a five-minute survey."
"Hey, don't mock the classics," your friend snickers. "First, you call the mysterious number. Then, you hear a creepy noise, then—boom!—your face is plastered on missing person posters everywhere. I'm just saying, if you disappear, imagine my position that I have to explain to the police that you got abducted by a paper flyer."
"I would be out there missing, and you'd be more worried about how insane you'd look?" You gasp in faux offense, giving your friend an insulted look. "Well, shit, if I do go get abducted, I hope my disappearance inconveniences you."
"Talk about fake friends." Your friend groans.
By the time you reach the train station, the afternoon heat has followed you down into the concrete underbelly of the platform, where the dense smell of ozone and old dust prevails. A distorted announcement crackles overhead before dissolving into static. Around you, commuters drift through the station in loose currents, some staring blankly at their phones while others cluster near the yellow safety line.
The platform is thick with the restless energy of people desperate to get home after a long, cumbersome day. Salarymen loosen their ties with exhausted sighs, students lean heavily against their backpacks, and the entire place hums with the collective murmur of hundreds of disjointed conversations. Every few minutes, a blast of hot and stale air rushes ahead of an arriving train, carrying the screech of metal brakes and the rhythmic thud of thousands of shuffling feet with it.
Your friend plops down onto an empty bench with a grunt and immediately pulls out their phone to check the endless stream of group chat notifications.
"Ugh, that damn bald head is already breathing down our necks," they groan, their thumbs flying across the screen. "He seriously thinks we can finish the layout project in a week? Fuck, I should dial up a hex hotline."
"Your project supervisor?" you ask, adjusting the strap of your bag. "Oh, wait, I know someone who does voodoo services. I can slip in your name if you want?"
Your friend blinks up from the screen. "…How many fliers have you fallen victim to?"
"None, but the voodoo lady offered a buy-one-get-one-free special for Valentine's Day." You tilt your head thoughtfully, as if genuinely considering the package. "In this economy? She knows how to market her deals."
"God, you are exactly the target audience for scammers."
Before you can retort, a piercing ding-dong chimes from the speakers, cutting through the buzz of the rush-hour crowd. The sound is disoriented, tearing through the rather loud static before a flat, pre-recorded voice speaks.
"Attention passengers, Line 2 is experiencing an operational delay due to a signaling fault at the previous junction. The estimated delay is fifteen minutes. We apologize for the inconvenience."
You both glance up at the digital arrival board mounted on the pillar above, and right on cue, the glowing text of your line flickers violently, the letters dissolving into a jumble of nonsensical pixels before solidifying into a blinking, red DELAYED.
"Oh, you've got to be kidding me," you groan, letting your head drop back against the concrete pillar.
Your friend whistles. "Damn, tough luck, huh?"
"You sound way too happy about this."
"That's because it isn't my train," they grin, jabbing a dramatic thumb at the opposite tunnel just as a blinding set of headlights emerges from the dark. Their eyes might as well reflect all 20 billion stars in the galaxy, from how delightful they seem to sparkle at the thought of going back home. "See that? Nature is healing—my train is here."
? This little shit.
"Get out."
"With pleasure." They burst out into a loud, unbothered laugh, already halfway to their feet. The sound reverberates cleanly through the station's ambient noise, drawing a few curious glances from nearby bystanders, though they remain completely unfazed, slinging their bag over one shoulder with the confidence of someone who has never once felt shame in their life.
As they walk closer to the open doors, they abruptly pause in their tracks before swiftly turning back toward you. "Oh, right, try not to join a cult while I'm gone."
With one final, truthfully unhelpful finger-gun in your direction, they disappear into the crowd flocking into the train.
Now left alone on the platform, boredom settles over you with an alarming efficiency. Even as you have your phone propped up on your hand, doomscrolling through your nonsensical for you page, you find it awfully tedious to burn through endless short videos for the next seventeen minutes. The algorithm offers you the same scheduled brain rot—essay video slop, hydraulic press videos, and sexy ass edits of Kim Taehyung—but none of it can quite drown out the thrum of the station.
Your thumb hovers over the screen, entirely checked out. Wow, it's new that you, of all people, can grow bored of scrolling through your phone all day.
That's when your hand instinctively drifts downward, wandering into your pocket until your fingers graze against the thin paper slip. You pull it out, the rough texture of the paper a stark contrast to the smooth glass of your phone. Smoothing out the creases of your thigh, you look at the poorly printed digits under the glare of the white fluorescent lights.
You stare at it with a straight face, fuck… am I that bored?
Sure, you impulsively took a strip purely from curiosity, and it was a decision that you made purely from the financial compensation that your attention instantly zeroed on—a momentary lapse of judgement, if you will—but now, coupled with your friend's frankly unserious warning, there is a hint of hesitance as you stare at the inky 010-xxx-xxx.
Yeah, no, even though you might as well impregnate money from how much you love it, you're not dumb enough to risk your safety for a shady advertisement that can lead you waking up to these freaky researchers performing diy brain surgery on you.
God, no—you have standards. Questionable standards? Perhaps, but standards, nonetheless.
Besides, what kind of person actually calls random numbers they found by the streets? Possibly someone who has a chance to be the opening segment of a true crime documentary.
You nod, no amount of financial compensation is worth becoming a cautionary tale.
"Hello? Uh, I'm calling about the survey on the flyer?"
It comes as a surprise that you folded under zero fucking pressure. Seriously, the sheer lack of resistance from your own brain is genuinely embarrassing. One second, your phone screen lit up with an unfinished manhwa, and the next, you were manually punching in the digits because reading a third amnesia arc in a single story pissed you off more than you can fathom, which inclined you to do stupid, dumb decisions.
Before this, you never thought you knew how strong fuck it actually is as a motivator—hell, entire civilizations were probably built upon less compelling reasons.
Still, these researchers must've really wanted those data, because the exact millisecond your thumb tapped the green icon, it connected instantly, the digital timer of your screen flickering to 0:01 without a single beep.
You're not sure what you're expecting in the first place, possibly an operator who interviews you with the same cheery cadence of an Olive Young employee, before wrapping things up with a sweet afternote of incoming money transfer into your bank account. The worst you expected might be some tricky questions you fear you wouldn't be able to answer, or getting yourself doxxed and ending up in a true crime podcast episode that people skip over because it is not "interesting enough," but that's truly about it.
Instead, what greets you is a noise that makes your skin crawl and your stomach drop. It is the distinct, slow sound of water dripping, except the consistency of it sounds entirely wrong—it's too agonizingly slow, too thick, hitting a surface somewhere with a wet and sickeningly viscous splat. Underneath the steady thud, there is an eerie tapping—light yet heavy at the same time, sounding exactly like a palm desperately tapping against a glass screen.
…What is this?
The muted tapping stops abruptly at 0:09, before a sharp gasp of air cuts through the receiver. It isn't a sigh, and it isn't a sound of someone preparing to speak—it sounds like someone who has been submerged underwater for minutes finally breaking the surface, desperately lunging for oxygen (for salvation). The sound is ragged, uncomfortably close, and loud enough that you instinctively flinch, pulling the phone away from your ear by an inch.
It's so unbearably heavy that you don't notice you've unconsciously balled your free hand into a fist, your nails digging slightly into the flesh. It's beyond you why you haven't instantly hung up the moment something was amiss, but you don't have time to dwell much on it when the line abruptly drops into a deep silence.
The transition from the inexplicable noises you heard to something so… still is so sudden it's sickening. As deeply unsettling as those obscure sounds were, not understanding them was one thing—hearing absolutely nothing afterward is infinitely worse. Something was surely happening on the other end, but this dead vacuum leaves your breathing to pick up its pace—did whatever was making those sounds just realize you were listening?
Dread coils and ruptures beneath your skin. It is a pressurized and suffocating silence, like the air inside a small, completely sealed room—it feels as if someone is standing right on the other side of the receiver, holding it dangerously close, breathing so shallowly it's almost imperceptible.
Just listening to the sound of your breathing.
What the hell, what the hell. A sudden, uncomfortable prickle of heat hits the back of your neck. The ambient noise of the train station—the chatter of commuters, the distant hum of ventilation—seems to be suddenly dull, masked by the oppressive void coming through the speaker.
Your gut churns nauseatingly, bile steadily gathering upward—hang up, hang up, hang up, hang up—but your thumb refuses to move, pinned under the weight of a primal sense of panic. Your instinct is screaming at you to slash the screen, break the connection, to chuck the phone onto the tracks if you have to, yet you can only stand there bathing in the cold itch of fear.
The digital timer on your screen silently blinks at 0:14 when the other line crackles back into life with a low, grinding friction—a sound so dry and abrasive it sets your teeth on edge. The texture of the noise sounds exactly like a set of blunt, ragged nails slowly dragging across a piece of coarse fabric—shit, it's so disturbingly close, vibrating directly against your eardrum as if someone is scraping the inside of your ear, painfully scratching it until it bleeds, bleeds and bleeds into a pool of sanguine beneath your feet.
Beneath the grating texture, a voice finally breaks through—a pitch, a specific vocal fry, a cadence that makes your jaw violently clench, and your fingers twitch.
It sounds exactly like your voice, screeching through a heavy set of glass.
It sharpens after a second, building to a rapid crescendo, before the speaker on the other side delivers a final click.
The fog in your brain clears, and you snap back into reality. You don't even remember your hand moving, but your thumb is already hovering directly over where the red end call button had been. You stand entirely paralyzed against the concrete pillar, the raw and urgent impulse to bolt tightening every nerve in your body.
"Fuck." Fuck, fuck, fuck—your friend was right about whatever this shit is being a set-up for a horror movie.
"Hell no, no more picking up unknown contacts from random fliers." Yeah, you've learned your lesson now! Curiosity killed the cat, and satisfaction did not bring it back—matter of fact, no amount of financial compensation is worth dealing with whatever psychological warfare that number just pulled on you.
Shoving your phone back into your pocket with a trembling motion, you swallow down the bitter taste of bile and steady your erratic breathing.
As you lower your gaze, your eyes naturally drop to the bench directly to your right. Sitting right there, wedged firmly into the corner between the rusted iron armrest and the slatted seat where your friend had been slouching just a few minutes ago, is a book.
You blink, your heart stopping for a physical beat. Since when was that there?
The book itself isn't wrapped in plastic, and it doesn't have any library sticker, a barcode, or any title that might indicate what it really is. To speak, it is a relatively thick, hardcover volume bound in dark leather that looks dull and dead more than anything under the station's harsh lighting. Distantly, you think that gold ink might suit the regal yet devastatingly poor air that the book exudes—yet, regrettably, even as you turn it around and upside down, there is still no indication of what the hell the book is, or who the hell it belongs to.
Quite frankly, you are not in the mood to deal with another creepy ass scenario.
"…Should I just drop by the lost-and-found counter?"
You pause at the thought before a metallic rumble echoes from within the dark tunnel mouth, followed by the sudden rush of hot wind that stirs the hair on your forehead.
You beam at the realization that your train is coming—talk about great timing. Guess you don't have the time to deal with some haunted Victorian book that might curse you the moment you open it!
"I'm never going back to this damn train station," you mutter under your breath, completely washing your hands of this situation.
The ride is a mindless blur of rattling metal and the hushed, collective murmur of people heading home, all of them counting down the minutes until they can throw themselves on any passable surface to unwind. Surprisingly, despite the horde of commuters swarming the station, you manage to find a seat near the door.
Scanning the interior of the train, you notice that it is nowhere near as packed as the station had been; passengers are scattered sparsely throughout the car in loose clusters, leaving entire rows vacant between them. Some doze against the chairs, others stare blankly at their phones, and a few simply watch the city slide by through the glass.
The whiplash from the bustling station to the quiet atmosphere of the car makes the whole train feel strangely hollow—too large for the number of people occupying it.
Still, as the doors slide shut and the train lurches forward, you let out a sigh and feel the tight knot of panic in your chest begin to loosen.
After everything that went down, you just need to decompress from all the mental whiplash you survived—some music will help scrub that horrifying phone call from your brain entirely.
Reaching for your bag, you grip the zipper and pull it open, sliding your hand inside to blindly fish around the main compartment for your earbud case. Your fingers brush past your wallet, slide over other items, up until they hit a surface that makes your body freeze in record time.
It's the harsh surface of leather.
You blink, a sudden, cold bead of sweat rolling down the back of your neck. Slowly, you peel the fabric of your bag open wider to look inside.
Staring right back at you, nestled directly between your binder and wallet, is the familiar expanse of that damn book.
Zip.
You pull the zipper shut so hard and fast that the metal teeth nearly catch the fabric.
Bye, fuck no. You squeeze your eye shut, shaking your head vigorously. I swear I didn't pick it up; I know I did not pick it up. I literally left it on a bench after deciding not to drop it off the lost-and-found counter because I would miss my train if I did.
You take a shaky breath, counting up to three in your head—you just misidentified something! It's quite dark in your bag, and you must be tired from all the draining activities you did today. It might've been the edge of your folder or an object of yours whose shadow is playing tricks on your exhausted, paranoid brain!
Carefully, you tug the zipper back open by an inch and peer through the gap.
"…Why is it there." The book, in all its frightening glory, remains sitting there, fitting perfectly into the corners of your bag as if it had been there and placed intentionally.
A wave of pure dread comes crashing down on you, your jaw dropping slightly as you stare down into your bag.
"Oh, you've got to be kidding me."
Your fingertips press against the leather cover, and you slightly shiver at the realization that the texture feels so wrong. It leaves an unnatural coldness that lingers on your skin, pricking it with a sensation so out of place it leaves you queasy—despite the slight heat of the train car, the book remained impossibly cold, the chill burrowing beneath your flesh and clinging to the contours of your bones.
Absolutely not.
You yank your hand out as if you've just touched a hot stove, aggressively zipping the bag completely shut.
You nearly sob out loud, God, I promise I'll return you to the lost-and-found tomorrow. Just please don't haunt my ass.
You pause for a second.
…Hell, today, even. I'll ride a bike back to the station if I have to. You mentally correct yourself, because if there was one thing that horror movies—specifically Horror Movies Explained videos, nobody is catching your pussy ass actually watching one—taught you, it was that supernatural entities loved exploiting loopholes. Please don't be cursed.
"I literally told you three times already, I wanted iced Americano! Why is this hot? It's literally mid-May!"
"You never said iced! You just said, "Oh, the usual"! How am I supposed to know your taste changes depending on the slight breeze outside?!"
Ah, a lover's spat.
Right as you try to lean back and tune out whatever the hell happened today, the embodiment of terrible subway etiquette settles into the row across from you. The young couple isn't screaming, at least, but their voices carry perfectly across the car in a hissed staccato.
Under normal circumstances, you'd be conspicuously invested—if not, irritated at most from the disturbance—but right now, this couple's petty relationship meltdown is the most beautiful thing to ever grace your ears. It's a normalcy that is a far cry from the potentially possessed book that might cause your death.
Now, you're not normally that nosey (probably), but you can appreciate an entertaining drama when it presents itself before you, no matter how—uh—morally and objectively wrong it is to eavesdrop on someone else's business.
Damn, this coffee shit gets serious, though, you think, sneakily dragging your eyes back to them every few words exchanged.
You don't even care that they're basically airing out their dirty laundry in public—you just need their energy to stay exactly where it is.
Ring!
The sudden sound punches straight through your train of thought, causing your entire body to involuntarily jerk before you realize it comes from the sharp vibration rattling against your thigh.
Shit, that scared me.
You fumble frantically for your phone, nearly dropping it in the process due to your sweaty palms. The moment you yank it from your pocket and glance at the illuminated screen, your stomach drops straight to the floor of the train.
…The caller ID holds the same digits as that flyer.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
A wave of pure nausea crashes through you, and without a second to think, you slam your thumb down onto the red decline button and roughly shove the phone face down on your knee.
Your pulse hammers painfully against your ribcage—you can feel your chest heaving in shallow and ragged breaths as you look up, desperately needing to hear the couple's bickering to remind yourself that you are safe, that you are in a public place, that you are—
The words die instantly in your throat.
…Where is everyone?
You look across the aisle, yet all that comes face-to-face are completely empty seats. Your head snaps to the left, then, to the right—the teenagers, the sleeping salarymen, the couple—they have completely vanished in the span of a single second while you were busy looking at your screen.
There are no signs of abandoned bags on the floor, no lingering coffee cups, no haphazardly sprawled jackets—the entire car has been utterly hollowed out, even as the scenery continues to flash normally past the windows.
For a moment, your brain refuses to process what you're seeing.
"No…" that's not right—that's not possible. Panic bursts beneath your skin, sending a rush of adrenaline tearing through your bloodstream. Your eyes dart frantically across the car, searching for anything you might have overlooked.
You launch yourself out of the seat, your bag dangling loosely on one shoulder as you stumble toward the door connecting to the next car.
It's not possible for them to suddenly vanish out of thin air. You try to reassure yourself as you sprint down the aisle toward the heavy metal door connecting to Car 5. You hurriedly slam your hand against the automatic press-button, watching as the doors immediately slide open with a mechanical hiss before dashing into the final car of the train line.
There has to be an explanation—maybe everyone just simultaneously moved.
Maybe there was an emergency announcement you missed because you were too frightened by that incoming call, maybe you're in the wrong car.
Maybe, maybe, maybe—
You slide to a halt, your pulse pounds thunderously against your eardrums.
You can taste the acidity of bile rising to your throat—the car is completely empty, rows of vacant seats stretch out under the harsh white lights, but you don't focus too much on the seats—your eyes are instantly locked in fear onto the far end of the car.
What should be a rear window looking onto the tracks behind the train isn't there; instead, your eyes meet with another automatic door, leading to another identical and empty car stretching into an impossible perspective.
You can feel beads of sweat trickling down the back of your neck. No. no, no, no. This line runs on five cars only. This should be the last car.
Did you misremember where you were sitting? Maybe this isn't the last car, and maybe panic just scrambled your sense of direction.
You hit the next door, which leads to another empty car. You hit the next one, then, another one, and another one, and another one, another one, another one, another one, another one, another one, another one, another one—
"What the actual fuck?!" You heaved in wrecked terror, the horror finally settling in you when you realized you're stuck in an infinite repeating loop. Fuck, is this your karma for taking delight in someone else's spat?! (is what you would have said if you were in a better and definitely saner headspace).
You stagger to a stop, your heart thumping violently as you stare down the seemingly endless stretch of cars. Maybe you're hallucinating, or you're suffering from carbon monoxide poisoning, or a sudden psychosis, or possibly a stress-induced mental breakdown—you'll take any of those.
"Okay," you breathe shakily. "Let's not panic. First rule of horror shits like this is that you should not panic."
The statement is underlined by the fact that you are, in fact, already fucking panicking.
Son, you are fooling nobody.
You try to take a trembling step backward, attempting to distance yourself from the infinite extents of aisles ahead.
Thump.
…?
Something bumps against the sole of your shoe.
You blink, staring ahead for a few seconds before a familiar spike of foreboding pierces through your chest. Slowly, with your crumbling mental fortitude, you look down.
Sitting right dead-center in the aisle is the book.
The book. The fucking book.
"God, of course it's cursed." You bitterly spit out.
Every single survival instinct within you is currently screeching at you to look away, to shut your eyes, to punt that damn book across the infinite hallway like some poor football, but your gaze is dragged downward by a magnetic pull, pinning your attention to the first page of the open book.
Huh, you think, there's… some words.
See, some words are an understandment.
🚨OFFICIAL NOTICE FROM THE BOOK OF GOOD FORTUNE!!!🚨
If you are reading this page, then congratulations! You have been selected by ▉▉ to be the owner of this book! ꉂ(˵˃ ᗜ ˂˵) Many people ignore this message, and they regret it!!! 💸🎉
In year ▉▉▉▉, a man named Xie Ju from China claimed this ledger and found out he was the long lost heir to an entire sexy conglomerate worth sacks of cash, which was later inherited to him!!!!! 🤑💰 A lady from Busan ignored this, threw this exact book to the bin, and her favourite K-POP group disbanded in a terrible scandal, and she was promptly fired in this terrible job market!! ( ˶°ㅁ°) Oh no! Do not end up like that lady!!! 🛑😱
Uwahhh! S-so what shwould you do? ( ꩜ ᯅ ꩜;) It's easy! You just have to claim this book as your own!! 😂😂😂
Those who successfully claim this book will receive, among other things:
1. Good fortune
2. Financial prosperity
3. Increased life expectancy
4. Better hair days
5. Improved posture
6. One (1) mysterious blessing! 🤯🤯
However, those who fail may experience:
1. Mild inconvenience
2. Severe inconvenience
3. Unfortunate coincidence
4. Extremely unfortunate coincidence
5. Unexplained phenomena
6. Sudden death 💀💀💀
B-but don't worry, okay? (..◜ᴗ◝..) To avoid immediate deletion (alongside the erasure of all local data associated with your original reality), you must read, execute, and bring the narrative to this empty book just as guided!! After reading this notice, system deployment will be commenced. Thank you for putting your trust in me!!!!! (˶ > ₃ < ˶)
[🔴PLEASE BE ADVISED🔴]: By reading this text, you have legally agreed to standard user synchronization. ദ്ദി(๑>•̀๑) ✧
...?
What the fuck.
Are you going through a psychosis break?
What kind of deranged chain-mail bullshit is this? You don't even know what the hell to say other than what the fuck, because this book probably traumatized you for life, and this motherfucker is talking about some ignoring this message will invite seven generations of financial ruin and spontaneous diarrhea if you don't share this to fifteen people.
Your eye twitches. Even the kaomojis piss you to the high heavens and low hells—what the hell does "(˶ > ₃ < ˶)" even contribute to the conversation? This looks more like an amino announcement than anything, minus the lack of musty green mold on the edge.
…Wait, what the fuck did it mean by deletion?
Your heart drops out of your ass when the stark white paper furiously trembles before the text within it liquefies—yes, as in, the blocky letters and cute little emojis melted off the page like trickles of watercolour. The symbols smear together into an incomprehensible sludge of writhing characters, the paper rapidly becoming a wamp of bleeding words.
Well, the intelligent thing to do would probably be to toss that book (it's really not, you don't want to get cursed with hair balding jutsu or something). The problem is that a blinding light all too suddenly flashes you straight behind the eyes, unleashing a sharp wave of vertigo that turns your stomach completely inside out.
?!
It is unlike any migraine or headache you've ever experienced—it feels as though somebody has reached inside your skull with a rusted spoon and begun viciously stirring.
Ding!
A high-pitched chime echoes directly inside your skull, vibrating so sharply against your molars. Biting back a pained groan, your eyes squint at the peculiar sight of a translucent, overly radiant screen that has popped out right in front of your face to flashbang you unprovoked.
"What—" Bless your soul, you thought the light had finally come to take you.
Holy fucking shit, how many goddamn death scares are you going to experience today? God, it literally cannot get worse than this.
ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED !
Hello, world!
[Welcome, valued user! (˶>⩊<˶)]
[System initialization is currently ongoing! We ask you to remain patient until the process is complete. (˶ˆᗜˆ˵)]
You stare at the screen.
Oh my god.
You've really lived long enough to be Kim Dokja—like those main characters from a system webnovel… except yours has more personality.
Now you've seen what happened to your next-door action protagonists that were transported and/or regressed into an utterly different world, accompanied by a system or something, without a single cent tossed into a coherent explanation, but that's a classic fictional novel plot for a reason.
It is not, however, supposed to be an actual piece of lore on you.
Ding!
[Configuration successful! Hehe, thank you for supporting our free-tier narrative experience! (♡ˊ͈ ꒳ ˋ͈)]
[System initialization: 100% complete!]
[Now loading data for user code: ▉▉▉▉▉… are you ready for an awesome adventure?! ◝(ᵔᗜᵔ)◜]
"An adventure?" you repeat, your voice a hollow thing in the dead air.
You've consumed enough webnovels, manhwas, webtoons, light novels, visual novels, fanfictions, mobile games, transmigration stories, regression stories, dungeon stories, hunter stories, childcare stories, academy stories, horror stories, guideverse stories, and whatever other genre humanity has managed to monetize to know exactly what comes after that sentence.
Nobody who says adventure means adventure. It is usually a word that is synonymous with systems repeatedly throwing a protagonist into life-threatening situations until they either develop character growth or severe mental trauma—well, it's usually both.
You've spent years reading this—your pattern recognition is stronger than ever, which is precisely why the alarm bell inside your head starts screaming vehemently.
No one ever gets a system and manages to live a peaceful, slacker life. Kiss goodbye to the potential of getting a stable nine-to-five job, because you will only know hell afterward.
[Good news, good news, valued user! (˶˃ᆺ˂˶)]
[Your narrative genre has been successfully identified! ( ˶˘ ³˘)♡]
Oh, you've got a bad feeling about this.
You let out a nervous laugh, "You know, it'd be nice if I could be reincarnated into a rich duke's family. Like a romance fantasy, at least? If you want your book to, uh, have something interesting in it. As long as it involves luxury and low stakes, I'll turn it into a reallyy good book!"
[…]
[⚞(˶>ᗜ<˶)⚟]
???
Is this system laughing at you?
You're torn between popping a blood vessel from anger or from pure fear for what's ahead of you.
[Ahem! Dromrolls, please! ฅ^>⩊<^ ฅ]
[Primary Narrative Classification: Ghost Story!!!!!! ദ്ദി(ᵔᗜᵔ)]
Oh.
Ok, we are all dying.
"What?!" You screech helplessly at the unmoving screen, your voice hitching an octave higher with a breathless squeak. "Ghost story? Are you insane?!"
This isn't even a matter of preference anymore—you are fundamentally, biologically, and spiritually incompatible with the horror genre. A lot of people may actively seek them out, but you, on the other hand, once spent seven consecutive nights with the hallway lights on because you fear something would move in the darkness after watching a few seconds of a horror movie.
I mean, sure, you read horror novels and webtoons here and there, but it still leaves you a bit paranoid when left alone, especially at night. Don't even start at how you have to watch mystery toys unboxing and assembly to lull you back to sleep.
You can barely manage to keep your composure when you walk back to your bedroom after closing all the lights, and now you have to subject yourself to living through all those supernatural stories?
"No, you don't understand. The second I see a ghost, I will cry." And that's not even an exaggeration.
[…]
"Then, I'll run and move far away."
A beat passes. "Very, very, far away."
[…]
[( ;; ´ ³` )]
You stare intently at the unresponsive screen, sweat building up on your palms.
"…I'm already in it, aren't I?" Your voice comes out weak.
Ding!
The screen flickers merrily at that (with confetti and all), and the sheer brightness of it nearly burns your retina.
[Ding! Ding! Ding! Correct! ヾ(≧∇≦)ゞ]
You can physically feel the last fragile strand of hope snap, burnt, incinerated, and dispersed in the wind.
"Oh. That's bad."
[You have successfully entered the narrative world. ( ˊᵕˋ )]
[Please enjoy your stay! (♡ˊ͈ ꒳ ˋ͈)]
You really need a drink.
ADDITIONAL SEGMENT:
You press your back firmly against the cold metal doors, hugging your knees to your chest.
After trying to wring the system by its interface—an endeavor that unfortunately proved to be futile, considering its lack of neck—you realize from its subsequent explanation that this endless subway car is essentially the system's own private staging area—a pocket domain it has temporarily stitched directly into the fabric of the real world.
[The current location exists between narrative layers and reality! It is very safe! (｡˃ ᵕ ˂ )⸝♡]
"Doesn't sound reassuring since you've basically trapped me in this train."
[Temporarily! ˆ꒳ˆ]
You want to drag your hands down your face. God, you forgot that systems don't understand any notion of morale.
You really wonder how the protagonists in those system webnovels get through all those shits without wanting to throw this little shit into purgatory.
[Now that onboarding is complete, we may proceed to the tutorial darkness! ( •̀ ᴗ •́ )و]
You freeze. "…The what?"
As if on cue, the screen's UI sparkles with animated glitter effects.
[Tutorial darkness! A beginner-friendly supernatural Darkness designed to familiarize new users with narrative mechanics! o( > ᗜ < )o ₊˚⊹♡]
[Please do not worry! This Darkness has been carefully selected for new users! (^_^♪)]
Huh… that sounds familiar. You scratch your head—now—where did you hear that from again?
Uh, the name's right on the tip of your tongue, but you seem to need a little push.
TUTORIAL MODE
[Watch For Misplaced Baggages, Passangers!]
A D-Class darkness where a train ceaselessly repeats itself. Passangers trapped inside will continue moving through identical train cars until the conditions have been met under the duration of two hours.
Those who succeed in reporting all abnormalities within the timeframe will be dropped safely on a randomized train station all over Korea.
Ding!
CLEAR CONDITIONS
1. Discover anomalies within the train
2. Correctly report all anomalies
3. Reach the exit car
[PROGRESS]: 0/8 anomalies found.[SYSTEM TIP!]: If something feels strage, then it probably is! If something doesn't feel strange, it might still be strange! Remember, trust your gut feeling, and most importantly, your eyes and memories, valued user! ( ∩´͈ ᐜ `͈∩)
…Fuck, you know this exact format—you know that familiar terminologies almost intimately, since it's deadass from one of your holy-grail webnovels.
Slowly, and almost comically horrifyingly, you begin to connect the dots that your survival instincts are hopelessly trying to ignore.
"…God, this is fucking GSGW."