Chapter Text
Jihun’s day couldn’t get any better. Yes, he was using “better” here derogatorily.
First, he missed his morning alarm, forcing him to skip breakfast and run to class in the pouring rain. Then, he had to carry the entire weight of a major presentation because his group mates “forgot“ their parts. The three of them ended up stuck at the university library working on the same project because of missing data.
By the time they finished, it was already 11 P.M.
“Jihun, when a day starts pulling a domino effect on you, stop pushing your luck. If you keep ignoring the universe, it’s just going to drop a house on you.”
He could almost hear a cool voice lecturing him about superstitions right now. Which he didn’t need. Because he was tired and hungry.
On cue, Jihun’s stomach growled fiercely.
Thankfully, he spotted the familiar glowing sign of a 24/7 Gajok Mart just a block away from the campus exit.
Tee-lang, tee-lang.
The small speaker by the door made a sound to signify someone entering the store.
Jihun’s feet immediately took him to the refrigerated section, and he checked his options. Since it was quite late, there were only a few choices left: a pork cutlet, a Spam rice bowl, and some pre-rolled tuna mayo kimbap. He took the latter and a bottle of banana milk, then hurriedly walked to the register.
“Ah, sorry about that,” the cashier muttered, looking genuinely apologetic. He looked right around Jihun’s age—definitely a poor student like himself stuck on the worst shift imaginable. He swiped the kimbap.
Beep. “Rough night?”
“Something like that,” Jihun replied with a tired look.
The cashier let out a weak, tired chuckle and scanned the banana milk.
Beep.
“That’s 3,700 won.”
Jihun pulled out the cash and handed it over. The guy took the bills, counting them quickly before dropping them into the register. With slow, practiced movements, he reached for a small plastic bag and slid the tuna mayo kimbap and banana milk inside. He slid the bag across the counter, along with Jihun’s change and the receipt.
Jihun was about to reach for the bag’s handles when the bright lights flickered twice and died, plunging the store into near-total darkness.
“...”
With a tired sigh, he grabbed the bag held by the employee’s hands.
But this guy wouldn’t let go.
“Uh…”
He tugged it once, lightly, but the employee still held onto it. Annoyed, Jihun looked up to tell him off, but the words caught in his throat.
The employee’s eyes were wide open, blankly staring at something past his shoulder.
“If someone is staring behind you with a face like they’ve seen a ghost, do not turn around to check.”
“Hey,” Jihun said, voice tighter than he meant it to be but still calm enough to pass for a casual inquiry. “What’s the matter?”
The employee’s shocked look was replaced by something closer to terror. He ducked down, frantically searching underneath the counter. Eventually, he pulled a crumpled piece of paper out from a cabinet under the register.
“T-The girl who worked the night shift before me left this,” he stammered. “She told me to read it if the lights ever went out after midnight, after flickering twice.”
What an oddly specific piece of advice.
Recognizing the situation for what it likely was, Jihun’s eyes moved toward the clock mounted on the wall behind the employee. The minute hand was pointed a little after the number “12.”
“I-It’s instructions.”
He flattened the crumpled paper on the counter, using the glow of the digital register screen to read. Jihun leaned in slightly to better read the messy handwriting.
Welcome to the Gajok Mart Night Shift Family! <3
If you are reading this, the store has entered After-Hours Mode. Don’t panic! Just follow these tips to ensure a successful shift!
#1: Greet every customer warmly. Etiquette is more important after hours.
#2: If a customer asks to buy a hot bar after midnight, check their eyes. If they have no pupils, tell them the microwave is broken.
#3: No refunds!
#4: If a customer pays with old paper money that smells like dirt, accept it. Do not count the change back to them.
#5: If you hear something wet dragging itself down Aisle 4, do not look at it.
This is a two-person effort! No one can leave the building until the sun rises.
Let’s do our best until the end of the shift! Fighting~! ^^
A two-person effort? For a job that only hires one?
“Every story follows a set of rules. Some stories, like this one, have unwritten ones you’d need to infer. But if you’re lucky, they’ll be on a wall, with a guide, or a convenient piece of paper.”
Jihun sighed. Why did these things always happen on the worst days imaginable?
He wasn’t even hungry anymore. He just wanted to lie down and sleep!
Tee-lang, tee-lang.
The store’s automated speaker suddenly signaled the entrance of a new customer. Mr. Unfortunate Employee in front of him was still frozen, blankly staring at the instructions left for him by the previous cashier.
So, reluctantly, Jihun turned his head and greeted them in his stead.
“Welcome to Gajok Mart. Please let us know if you need any help.”
Standing by the entrance was a figure in a black business suit. The fabric hung loosely, as if there was nothing but a skeleton underneath it. Overall, pretty tame for a ghost story, Jihun faintly thought, even if the pale person beside him didn’t share this opinion.
The university student quickly stepped around the side of the counter, slipping into the narrow space right next to the cashier.
“W-What are you doing?” the cashier hissed.
“Didn’t you read the rules?” Jihun tiredly whispered back. “It’s a two-person shift.”
The figure suddenly lurched toward the perishable foods section, surprising the Gajok Mart employee beside him. However, it did nothing but pick up ordinary kimbap.
It shuffled slowly toward the counter. Up close, it smelled like rot and heavy incense.
Jihun stepped in front of the register.
“Did you find everything okay?” He asked, keeping his voice even and professional.
The entity didn’t answer. It slowly raised its arm and dropped the kimbap onto the counter. Jihun grabbed the barcode scanner.
Beep.
“That will be 1,400 won.”
The figure reached into its suit pocket with a jerky movement. It pulled out a single, crumpled 1,000-won bill and four 100-won coins, placing them flat on the counter. The paper money was damp, and the coins were stained with dirt, but it was exactly 1,400 won.
Jihun didn’t look at its eyes. He took the money and dropped it straight into the register, closing the drawer with a firm click. He grabbed a small plastic bag, slid the kimbap inside, and pushed it across the counter.
“Thank you. Have a nice night,” Jihun said, offering what he hoped was a polite smile.
Its long fingers wrapped around the handles of the bag. It turned around and walked back toward the entrance.
Tee-lang, tee-lang.
The doors slid open, and the figure vanished into the pitch-black fog outside.
The automatic doors clicked shut.
The cashier collapsed back against the cigarette racks, his hands shaking so violently that a lighter clattered to the floor.
“F-Fuck this shit,” he stammered, voice rising with every word. “I’m out. I don’t care about the pay. I’m leaving!”
“Wait-” Jihun reached out to grab his sleeve, but he was too late. The cashier bolted from behind the counter and sprinted toward the entrance.
‘No one can leave the building until the sun rises,’ he wanted to say. Did this guy have no self-preservation?
But, to his surprise, the sensors triggered.
Tee-lang, tee-lang.
The doors parted.
Wasting no time, the employee lunged through the opening. But before his feet could even clear the threshold, something violently yanked him backward and dragged his body into Aisle 4.
Jihun gripped the edge of the counter and looked away.
From the deep shadows of Aisle 4, a wet, tearing noise cut through, followed by the sharp snap of bone. The student could hear something heavy thudding against the metal shelving, sending a row of instant ramyeon cups clattering to the floor.
A gasp echoed, followed by a pop.
Jihun kept his eyes on the counter. He could see his knuckles shaking.
Could he have done more to help him? He did entertain that customer to avoid penalties, but…
Honestly, wasn’t screaming and running toward an exit the only natural response when faced with something supernatural? Jihun was pained to admit it, but he really wasn’t the normal person in this scenario.
Nothing had ever been normal ever since that day he went home to find his apartment way bigger than it should have been. Jihun would have been trapped in that place forever had that person not arrived on time.
Wait a second… at the end of the note, didn’t it also say-
This is a two-person effort!
Jihun, now alone, looked down at the instructions left by an ex-employee on the counter.
‘Shit.’
Tee-lang, tee-lang.
The doors parted again.
Jihun was about to force a smile when the newcomer spoke first.
“So, this is where you’ve been. I told you to call if you’re going to be out late.”
A dark-colored sweater, wrinkled pants, and uncombed hair—as if he had just gotten out of bed and run all the way here.
It was his older brother, Kim Soleum!
Kim Jihun’s day really couldn’t get any better. But this time, he thought this sincerely.
Supernatural Disasters don’t exist in this world because people don’t believe in ghosts.
That’s right. Here, they’re “fictional.”
The Dark Exploration Records is a fictional wiki page. Therefore, the stories that exist there are fictional too.
(At least in this world. Otherwise, they would have a registered company by the name of Daydream Inc.)
Similar to how Kim Soleum resolved a ghost story that began when someone accidentally left a piece of red clothing at Exit 4, a ghost story can’t exist when no one believes it’s caused by a ghost.
And in Soleum’s home world, no one believes that ghosts are real.
Except him.
For years, Kim Soleum was trapped in a world of ghost stories. He had been invited into that world, had seen people melt in a subway, had worked for a company that harvested their Dream Essence to create potions, had been abandoned by said company, had been lured into a TV-show Darkness, had come back to spy on a government agency that rescued people from said Darknesses, had resolved a Disaster that continuously killed 500,000 people, had almost died multiple times to said Disaster, and had nearly lost himself to another Disaster…
You get the picture.
Kim Soleum believed ghost stories were real, even when he went back to his home world. In fact, he still worried about the people he had left behind.
After he got back, Soleum refused to check the contents of Dark Exploration Records, fearful of any new entries being added. He had never forgotten that its full title is “Prophecy of the Apocalypse: Dark Exploration Records”—an ominous title that hinted at the end of the world.
He often fell asleep thinking about whether Director Cheong had already recovered enough to start terrorizing people into signing permanent contracts again.
He wondered how Ho Yuwon was doing in his counseling, whether Go Youngeun’s father had recovered enough to join his family, and if Supervisor Park had been decontaminated enough to rejoin Section Chief Lee back in the D-Team. He also hoped that Eun Haje, fulfilling her contract with Director Ho, was out living her best life outside Daydream Inc.
On his worst days, he even thought about that psycho who looked like he was going through a change of heart after the events at Jisan Village.
Though recently, Soleum thought a lot about the members of Black Tortoise Team 1. Did they ever find new members to join their team? Agent Choi and Agent Bronze were very capable people, but it was because there were too few of them in the first place that the tragedy of Looky Mart happened.
The former agent hoped they had more help. He wondered if they thought about him, too.
And, of course, there was his Good Friend…
…
Anyway. Kim Soleum believed in ghost stories. It was difficult not to after what he saw. He didn’t think he could see them as mere “stories” ever again. They were as real as the existence of the “characters” he had met and treasured in the world where Dark Exploration Records wasn’t just fiction.
He believed urban legends so fiercely that he looked only at the floor when he was in an elevator. His mouth dried at the thought of stepping on a train, so he had bought a bicycle and used it as his main mode of transport. Even the sight of supermarkets made him ill, so he had learned to buy what he needed in outdoor wet markets, online, or in crowded malls.
So, how did a world where people thought ghost stories were fictional accept a person like Soleum?
Easy. It assumed ghost stories were real.
To him.
To Kim Soleum, who knew they were real and couldn’t imagine a life, or even a world, where they weren’t.
To his misfortune, this world has a lot of ghost stories—way more than the content of the DER wiki. From the whispers of a divorced woman in Bongcheon-dong to rumors of the Jayu-ro highway ghost that only appears on foggy nights, there are many urban legends detailing supernatural phenomena in Soleum’s world. And until the day he was invited into another world, he, too, had thought that these were fictional (albeit terrifying) stories meant to scare teenagers or recycled as material for modern horror media.
But ever since he came back, Soleum couldn’t help but think…
Were they real?
Was he really not supposed to walk alone in the Bongcheon-dong neighborhood after 11 P.M.?
Had the crashes along Jayu-ro been caused by supernatural phenomena and not intoxicated drivers?
Was that story told to him about a grandma who stalked kids at night to keep him in the house after hours, not a story at all?
Soleum could not help but entertain thoughts along those lines.
That’s why it was only a matter of time before it finally happened.
On an inconspicuous Friday night, his ever-hardworking Section Chief refused to leave the office at the HR-recommended time of 6 P.M. until the work was complete. But Soleum was a good employee who needed the money to sustain his rent and hobbies, so he stayed with his boss after hours to help him handle the remaining requests.
When the man signed the last document and finally started packing up, Soleum did the same. After waiting some more for his boss to enter his car and drive off, he ran like mad to the station, determined to catch the last train of the night.
(This was back when he was an idiot lulled by the safety of his home world and hadn’t yet bought a bicycle.)
The ex-Daydream employee tapped his transit card and hurriedly walked past the ticket gate to the nearest open car.
With a deep sigh, Soleum sat down. He found himself doing a quick scan out of habit.
The carriage he was in was empty. Too empty, maybe.
It was also unnaturally cold.
The doors closed.
Rrrrrrrrr...
Soleum’s apartment was only three stops away. He could handle a few minutes of silence.
Now arriving at Yeouinaru Station.
If your stop is Yeouinaru Station, please exit the doors to your left.
Shhh.
A man stepped in. He was wearing a perfectly tailored black business suit reminiscent of his coat back in Daydream Inc.
This passenger sat in front of him. Which… was a bit weird, he had to admit. The car was big enough for them to sit on opposite ends and ignore each other, but maybe the man wanted some company.
And because Soleum was a coward, he didn’t mind the company.
Shhh.
The doors closed, and the train sped up to the next stop.
Still, he wasn’t a social person either, so he took out his phone and ignored the man’s presence. He opened his KK messenger app and saw two unread messages from his brother.
> Kim Jihun (8:32 PM)
I have a big test tomorrow. Gonna lock in
Don’t greet me when you come home
His younger brother, Kim Jihun, was a first-year university student currently staying in his apartment. Initially, Jihun was going to stay in the on-campus dormitories, but his school had an influx of exchange students this year, and they had priority over the dorms.
Rent in Seoul was as expensive as it could be in Korea. Soleum was high enough on the corporate ladder to afford his current space, which was near a station, and it was big enough to accommodate two people. So, his brother didn’t strongly protest when Soleum offered one of his spare bedrooms—especially when it meant he didn’t have to pay the massive, upfront cash security deposit required to rent a space.
Jihun was also a good kid who wasn’t entirely ungrateful for the free rent, so he did most of the chores and shopping on weekends.
Just as Soleum was about to type out a response, he heard a cold whisper directly in his ear.
“Hey.”
He almost let out a verbal curse.
“You look pretty tired.”
Hello? Gods that governed reality?
Wasn’t he home? In a world with no ghost stories? This must be his imagination. Haha.
Soleum was tired, after all. He hadn’t had a day this long in a while…
Now arriving at Mapo Station.
If your stop is Mapo Station, please exit the doors to your left.
The train stopped at the intended platform.
Shhh.
The doors closed after a few seconds with no new passengers in the car.
“Why don’t you quit your job and come work for me?”
‘Motherf-’
Outwardly, Soleum maintained the poker face he was known for back in Daydream. He kept his eyes locked on his phone, determined to pretend he was the only person on this carriage tonight.
He was getting off at the next stop. He just had to hold on.
But…
Despite his loudly beating heart, Soleum’s mind, which always worked best under pressure, couldn’t help but race at the implication.
He’d had a long shift. It was the last train. He was riding the Seoul Subway Line 2.
‘...’
The world could not be serious.
“The pay is good,” the voice mumbled. “Much better than the night shift. You... like money, right?”
‘... Shit.’
It was serious.
The Seoul Subway Line 2 has a famous urban legend attached to it. According to the rumors, there is a corporate wraith that preys on salarymen riding the last train of the day, usually those who have to stay overtime. He asks if you want to quit your job.
How does he know all this, you might ask?
Well, ever since he quit reading the Darkness Exploration Records, Soleum needed another hobby to put all his energy into. His interests in the supernatural never really went away, so...
He started reading about real urban legends.
Again.
While DER had been around for nearly two decades, it wasn’t as well-known as it is today. The only reason Soleum discovered it was because he had always been interested in the supernatural, even when he was a teenager.
Have you ever heard of the 2chan /x/ board and @lt.folklore.urban? Soleum mastered the art of web digging early on because of these sites. He even paid a one-time flat fee of 13,000 won to access the then-epicenter of collaborative internet folklore—a forum that would later conceive life-like sightings of a featureless man who left notes in a forest.
Today, there were dedicated forums like r/gh0stst0ries that allowed the common user to share their experiences or horror-themed ARPGs they could join online (not that he partook in them since he became a corporate employee). Soleum would even “watch” MeTubers talk about supernatural phenomena as long as he put his phone down and treated it like a podcast.
Sometimes, mainstream media would even join the discussion.
For example, while nobody knows what happened to the people who responded to this suspicious job offer, there have been real missing person cases reported where they were last seen riding the last train on Line 2 during a weeknight.
“...”
Soleum suddenly let out a fake yawn.
With one eye closed and the other only half open, he squinted at the window behind the other person since he was too afraid to look at his face.
However, he saw the man’s unnerving wide smile anyway, as his face was reflected on the glass behind him.
When... it should have shown his back?
Now arriving at Gongdeok Station.
He stood up at a very NORMAL pace and walked to the carriage door.
“Leaving so soon?”
The brakes screeched loudly against the metal tracks. Soleum continued to fix his eyes on the blurred scenery of the arriving platform.
He counted the seconds.
“Hey, consider this offer seriously. We have great benefits.”
Three.
“Like eternal rest. That sounds nice, doesn’t it? HahAha…”
Two.
We have arrived at Gongdeok Station. Please exit the doors on your right.
Shhh.
One!
Soleum jumped stepped out of the car and walked to the ticket machines.
Without realizing it, he was already up the stairs that led to the subway entrance, tightly gripping on his phone to a point where he thought it might break.
He...
He was done with ghost stories...
Kim Soleum was supposed to be home, in a perfectly normal world, living a normal, boring life.
So why...?
Heart pounding loudly against his chest, his legs quickly took him past a row of building all the way to where his apartment was.
He skipped the elevator and climbed up to the fifth floor.
Thud-thud, thud-thud
Thud-thud, thud-thud
He stopped in front of his door.
Soleum’s chest heaved, his breath coming in shallow gasps.
‘It wasn’t real,’ he desperately told himself. He was just tired. His mind still couldn’t let go of those years spent in another world, and it had finally manifested in some freak hallucination in a subway he knew an urban legend about.
His fingers fumbled with the keys once before he jammed the metal into the lock.
Click!
Walking inside, he saw Jihun diligently studying in the living room. Remembering his text, he left him to his books without greeting. He went straight into his bedroom and shut the door behind him.
Soleum sighed and set his briefcase beside his room’s table.
He reached up, loosening the tight knot of his tie, and moved his eyes toward the pink bunny sitting on his nightstand, half expecting it to move. The doll sat perfectly still.
‘As expected.’
After all, Kim Soleum lived in a world with no ghost stories, and the Late-Night Talk Show was a ghost story.
But if this were true, then what was this?
Why was there a human face pressed flat against the inside of the glass in the fourth-floor company bathroom mirror the following week? It was a terrifying thing that had no eyelids, blood pooling through the place where its eyelashes should have been.
...
Soleum wanted to jump out of the window.
Should he just wait for another person to enter the restroom before going in next time?
The ex-Daydream employee slowly turned off the faucet and walked backward out of the restroom while keeping his eyes on the entity.
Twice could still be a coincidence, right? He immediately erased the thing’s face from his memory.
The next day, however, he stepped into a train car where all the advertisements were upside down.
Unfortunately, Soleum know from Nomuwiki that it wasn’t that the ads were printed upside down in this circumstance, but that the train itself hung upside down.
In fact, it was truly unfortunate that, also according to the wiki, this supernatural phenomenon only happened to passengers who recognized the shift in gravity.
Thud!
Soleum violently dropped onto the ceiling of the car.
He was then chased by smiling entities until he reached his stop.
Somehow managed to convince himself it was all a dream that night.
However, the former agent grew some sense and didn’t take the train again after that (he did drop into a lot of train-related ghost stories that could have triggered his PTSD). He also finally bought a bike.
For months, the ex-Daydream employee stubbornly continued to rationalize each of these supernatural events as leftover trauma from his long stay in a world where ghost stories exist. Until one particularly rainy day, when his cute younger brother was stuck in an apartment with more rooms than it should have had.
After that, Soleum had no choice but to accept it.
‘I’m not safe here.’
He might have been, if he had just remained blissfully ignorant. But he couldn’t unlearn what he knew. And you know who also had the misfortune of knowing?
Jihun.
Because of Soleum’s initial refusal to acknowledge the existence of ghosts in his home world, it was only a matter of time before Jihun, with whom he shared an apartment, was exposed to supernatural phenomena. By the time he could do something about it, it was already too late.
“How did you even know I was here?”
“It was late and I was worried, so I tracked your phone to its last location.” Soleum answered, his voice flat as ever, as he walked right past the entrance. Normally, Jihun would have been miffed at this blatant invasion of privacy, but he was thankful his brother was a paranoid man.
Soleum briefly eyed the piece of paper on the counter before taking it himself. He scanned what Jihun had deduced were this phenomenon’s rules.
“Unless you got a part-time job without telling me, I’m assuming the actual employee ran away?”
Jihun grimly looked at Aisle 4, which was now silent.
“Ah.”
Ignoring the blood pooled between the tile gaps, Soleum moved to enter the other side of the counter. Jihun, assuming that his brother would accompany him until the end of the shift after reading the rules, made space. However, Soleum just walked past him and pensively gazed at the analog clock on the wall.
12:24.
With all that had happened, Jihun could have honestly sworn he’d been here longer.
Still, it was the early weeks of summer, so the sun would rise pretty early. They’d only be here for another five hours. Plus, tomorrow was a Wednesday, so his classes wouldn’t start until the afternoon. He could set an alarm at 1 P.M. and sleep in the morning.
He could do this!
His hyung was here, after all. And things never seemed so scary when he was around.
“Jihun.”
The university student watched as his brother reached for the wall clock. Once it was in his hands, he flipped it on its back and turned the dial multiple times until the hour hand was pointing at the number “6.”
A few seconds passed before the lights flickered twice and then fully powered back on. Oddly, the place looked cleaner than it was when he came in, as if an employee had tidied up before opening.
Satisfied, Soleum put the clock back on the wall and faced him.
“Let’s go home.”
…
It couldn’t be that easy.
“Hyung… just because you changed the time doesn’t mean we get to leave. It’s obviously still ’after hours.’”
“It does,” Soleum insisted. He even lightly gestured to the lit ceiling to prove a point.
In return, Jihun pointedly looked at the glass that separated the inside of the convenience store from the still dark street illuminated only by lamps. Did Soleum really think a plastic dial could rewrite whatever twisted reality governed this place? So what if the lights turned on? They couldn’t just walk out!
Soleum noticed his hesitation. He tilted his head slightly, eyes landing on Jihun’s frustrated expression.
“You don’t believe me?”
Without waiting for an answer, Soleum turned on his heel.
“W-Wait!”
His brother didn’t hesitate and ran toward the automatic doors before Jihun could grab his arm. Now fully awake, he sprinted after him, remembering what happened to the last guy, and caught him in a hug.
But his hyung was, for some reason, stronger than Jihun, who was younger.
(He didn’t know that Soleum had been biking to work for months and using the stairs instead of the elevator to reach their apartment floor.)
Tee-lang, tee-lang.
With a soft hiss, the glass doors parted, and Soleum stepped across the threshold with Jihun’s shaking arms wrapped around his waist. He closed his eyes, bracing himself for the worst-case scenario.
Together, they walked out into the dark streets.
...
They... walked out?
Things were okay?
“I told you.”
Jihun slowly opened his eyes and looked up at Soleum’s gentle expression, who lightly patted his head.
‘T-This jerk!’
He made Jihun worry for no reason.
The least he could do was not save the explanations until after he did things. It wasn’t like they were in a rush.
(Except Soleum was. He didn’t want to stay there and see the next customer walk in.)
He felt his brother pass something into his hands. It was the plastic bag that contained the purchases he’d made earlier. Jihun had forgotten about it entirely.
“...”
Kim Soleum forgiven, Jihun took the kimbap out and ate it as they walked, chewing quietly.
They reached the apartment by 12:45.
The elevator stopped functioning at 10 P.M. to encourage curfew among its tenants, so they took the stairs. Jihun felt his legs grow heavier with each flight, but his hyung’s breathing hadn’t changed at all. He continued to explain how ghost stories like that, which included a time of ending in their rules, were easy to escape.
Sure, they could just wait for it to end, but apparently, one could trick it by making it look like time had already passed. They were fortunate the place had something that could tell the time—they would have needed to look for a less direct solution if the analog clock hadn’t existed. Or stayed until the sun rose outside, which would have clearly signified “daytime.”
Plus, since the rules only extended to the store itself, Jihun didn’t have to mind what happened outside of it.
He also heard him mutter something like ‘Even Daydream wouldn’t use something like this to farm. It only lasts five to six hours, and it’s easier to clear than an F-Class Darkness...’
He pretended he didn’t hear it, though. Not that he understood any of what was said anyway.
Soleum also said that if he hadn’t arrived when he did, the next entrant would have likely been another human who could take the dead guy’s job since it was a “two-person shift.” To be more specific, the ghost story would have lured the nearest passerby, as it did with Jihun. And unless the next guy was brave, they would have also attempted to escape and died as a result.
Rather than the unusual customers, wouldn’t the real horror story here be the many people Jihun would have seen dragged to Aisle 4?
“Avoid going into that place past 9 P.M. from now on. Since it’s a story connected to a handwritten note, it’s unlikely to happen in another Gajok Mart. But to be safe, avoid going into any convenience store when major establishments are closed for the day. Plenty of employees like to make up ghost stories to haze newbies assigned to the night shift.”
Soleum watched his brother, half-asleep, prepare for bed while occasionally nodding to more of what he called “hyung’s oddly specific but helpful advice.”
It would be tough for Jihun to completely avoid convenience stores given the late nights demanded by his degree, so Soleum would probably start texting him after work if he needed anything if he arrived at the apartment first.
Bidding each other good night, he left him to his privacy and closed the door.
With a small sigh, Soleum leaned his head against the wood and closed his eyes.
Fortunately, since urban legends here exist mostly to scare, plenty of them are harmless if you know the rules. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have crazy ones. He still hadn’t figured out how to escape the Backrooms if he accidentally walked into the place.
If there’s any cause for worry, it’s that this world doesn’t have a large number of people who know how to safely conclude these stories. Unless they are already interested in similar media like Dark Exploration Records or Sil■nt Hill, people will rarely think of approaching these phenomena like puzzles that need a solution.
But, in the first place...
In this world that doesn’t believe that ghosts are real…
These stories probably only manifest for people who know they’re “real,” like Kim Soleum.
Unless there’s another poor bastard out here who got sent to a world where ghost stories are real, these supernatural phenomena are only real to Soleum, who continued to manifest them into his daily life, and more recently, his younger brother, Jihun, who experienced a real ghost story in Soleum’s apartment.
Basically, people who can never think of them as “fiction.”
So, whatever happened to Jihun was now Soleum’s responsibility. If any civilian was dragged into the supernatural phenomena around Soleum and Jihun, they were Soleum’s responsibility, too. It was because of him that Gajok Mart lost an employee tonight.
Soleum must never allow other civilians to come out of these phenomena thinking, ’I was dropped into a ghost story, but thank god I managed to survive.’ Otherwise, they, with the sure knowledge that ’the supernatural is real,’ would go around attracting urban legends themselves and drag even more people into them.
So, what had started as a casual hobby soon became a job. To survive and protect the ignorant people of this world, he had no choice but to read more ghost stories.
...
Maybe Kim Soleum should never have come home.