Chapter 23

Chapter 23. Crash Landing (1)

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"Gasp."

Su-myeon woke up with a start.

His own familiar room. His comfortable bed.

His breath had surged as though he'd been sprinting, but it soon settled.

As his ragged breathing calmed, the ticking of a clock's second hand filled the quiet.

"……."

Silence. And the still-familiar ceiling of his own room.

Had it been an unrealistically vivid dream?

Su-myeon carefully rose, opened his bedroom door, and stepped out.

"……Mom?"

No sound at all.

[AM 10:10]

Glancing at the living room wall clock sent a chill down his spine for no good reason.

Just a coincidence — telling himself that, Su-myeon opened his parents' bedroom door.

"What the…."

The room was empty.

But it wasn't simply that the room was unoccupied.

The clothes that should have been hanging on the rack, the bed, the furniture — all of it was gone.

And the photographs on display in the master bedroom.

In every single one, his parents' faces had been cleanly erased.

On top of that, Su-myeon belatedly realized he was wearing the jacket.

The Nemean Hide. The flashy sukajan allegedly made from it.

"……."

Su-myeon fought back the urge to scream and carefully felt around in his pockets.

Clink.

The crisp sound of coins. Multiple coins clinking against each other.

Su-myeon turned his pocket inside out and dumped everything onto the floor.

The clatter of coins hitting the ground rang loud, and among them, his phone landed with the heaviest thud.

Thunk.

Su-myeon snatched up the phone.

Thankfully it wasn't a Heartphone — it was his own familiar, scratch-covered phone.

But the objects that had spilled from his pocket and scattered across the floor were unmistakably Rose Coins.

More than ten of them, along with,

[Belle's Secret Shop]

"AHHH!"

Discovering the strange yet familiar app on his phone, Su-myeon finally screamed.

Hands trembling with shock, he forced himself to calm down and frantically worked his fingers.

Contacts, computer files, photo albums, everything.

He tore through every source he could to confirm his parents' existence.

But something was wrong.

Their traces had been erased as perfectly as though a piece of reality had been surgically excised.

"……They're gone."

Everything related to the game <UTG> had vanished too.

Or more precisely, it had disappeared without a trace from the internet.

"……."

If everything had simply vanished everywhere, he could have written it off as losing his mind.

But the games remained — intact — in the data he'd downloaded onto his own computer.

Every backed-up walkthrough, every guide he'd written himself.

All of it existed only in his local computer files, not on the internet.

'Have I actually gone insane?'

Su-myeon sat in a daze, his grip on reality slipping.

How was he supposed to verify this bewildering version of reality?

After a brief deliberation, he grabbed his things and rushed out of the house.

***

Something was wrong.

"……."

Han-su woke in the station's on-duty room and sat upright, staring blankly ahead.

He'd had an absurdly vivid dream — and something told him he couldn't just dismiss it as one.

A strange feeling, but there was nothing he could do about it right now.

Even if he picked up the phone, who would he call about a dream he'd just had…?

"A dream… was it?"

No — Han-su couldn't bring himself to believe it was a dream.

But there was no one he could talk to about an experience even stranger than this supposed dream.

After sitting deep in thought for a long while, Han-su headed to the Violent Crimes Unit office.

It was work hours, after all. Whatever was going on, he still had a job to do.

"……?"

But as he entered the unit, something felt off, and he looked around.

"Oh, get enough rest?"

"Hey, left the case file for your assignment on the desk. Read through it."

The senior detectives who clapped him on the shoulder as they passed were acting perfectly normal.

Familiar. It was his ordinary everyday life, nothing more.

Yet an inexplicable sense of wrongness kept tugging at his ankles like something ominous.

As though something that should be there… wasn't.

"…Where did Chief Yun go?"

Han-su found the gap, but no one answered him.

"Excuse me, Detective Park. Where did Chief Yun go?"

He finally grabbed a senior detective nearby and asked directly, but the answer only deepened the strangeness.

"Huh? What."

"I mean…… Chief Yun……."

"What about him?"

As though anything related to Chief Yun simply couldn't be heard.

"What's your deal? Wasting my time."

Detective Park brushed him off as though Han-su had called him over for nothing, and went back to his own work.

Unease crawled up the back of Han-su's neck, stiffening it. He stood and grabbed every detective within reach.

It wasn't just Detective Park. Strangely, no one would respond to that one question.

Chief Yun — the person who'd had the greatest impact on his career.

Everyone went about their day, but that one seat was empty.

"What's today's date?"

When Han-su asked this instead, everyone gave precise answers.

But even that was hard to accept.

Three days had passed since the last day he remembered.

'Three days….'

A period that matched exactly the time spent in that dream — or that anomaly.

Three days of his absence had elapsed, yet everyone gave vague answers about what he'd been doing during that time.

"Working. Same as usual."

"How should I know what you were up to? You came in to work, I assume."

No matter how hard he pressed, they all deflected with awkward, unnatural responses.

What on earth had happened…?

"Han Su-myeon……."

Lost in an incomprehensible reality, Han-su found himself thinking of that person without meaning to.

The one among them who'd always had the best grasp of the situation.

'He might know something.'

But how was he supposed to find him?

Su-myeon hadn't shared much beyond the fact that he lived somewhere in Seoul.

Han-su didn't know his exact age, his educational background, or his job.

The only way to contact him had been the Heartphone inside that hotel.

'That phone is gone.'

All Han-su had now was his own plain, old phone.

"…Nothing."

No evidence. No traces. Nothing.

"Hey, hey! HEY! Shut the hell up, will you?!"

"Ah, fuck. First thing in the morning. Just my goddamn luck……."

The stream of suspects being brought in and the commotion that followed scattered Han-su's thoughts.

No detective working in Seoul had the luxury of a quiet morning.

He barely made it through the chaotic morning, and only when lunch arrived could Han-su catch his breath.

Even during his meager break with a cigarette, his mind was a tangled mess.

The suffocating smell of blood that lingered in his memory. The crushing tension that had felt like it would collapse his lungs.

'And all of that was just an illusion?'

Maybe he'd finally cracked from being too busy?

He'd never considered himself particularly imaginative.

Had seeing the worst of humanity for so long finally driven him to this elaborate level of insanity?

"Detective Kang, there you are. Someone's here to see you."

A senior detective approached the smoking area, interrupting his thoughts.

"…Sir?"

"Go check. Young guy. Doesn't seem like he's here about a case."

The senior detective waved Han-su off and pulled out his own cigarette.

Han-su headed back to the Violent Crimes Unit.

A young man. Not here about a case.

Those two details made him think of one person without meaning to.

"Su-myeon."

Han Su-myeon. The person who occupied the largest space in his memory of that ordeal.

There he was, sitting in front of Han-su's desk with his head bowed.

When Han-su called his name, Su-myeon — who'd been anxiously bouncing his leg in the chair — shot to his feet.

"Oh, shit. Thank God."

Han-su felt the exact same emotion the moment he saw Su-myeon.

It was as though Su-myeon's presence proved that Han-su hadn't gone mad alone — that they'd gone through something insane together.

But then Han-su's eyes narrowed, and he looked Su-myeon up and down.

"That jacket…"

Su-myeon was wearing the jacket he'd bought in that hotel.

Han-su himself had woken up in the exact same clothes he'd been wearing when he first entered the hotel.

Compared to that, Su-myeon's outfit was conspicuously out of place.

He'd returned to reality carrying an object obtained in that bizarre hotel.

"Something's… wrong. When I woke up, my parents were gone…."

"My unit chief has vanished."

Han-su matched Su-myeon's account immediately.

Knowing they were in the same situation paradoxically provided a kind of solidarity and relief.

At least if it wasn't happening to him alone, maybe they could work it out together.

"……."

Could they?

"Something's… wrong. Something, something is…."

"Let's calm down first."

The situation was enough to drive anyone insane, but Han-su barely managed to regain his composure.

His hands shook, but he steadied himself and made Su-myeon a cup of instant coffee.

He held on to the vague belief that together, they could find a way somehow.

What Su-myeon had shown them in that bizarre hotel was worthy of that trust.

Without him at the end, none of them would have made it out.

"Excuse me… is there a detective named Kang Han-su here…?"

Then a familiar voice entered the Violent Crimes Unit.

"He's — here!"

It was Ju-hee.

She spotted Han-su and Su-myeon and sank into a chair on the spot, relief washing over her.

As they rushed to steady her on her wobbling legs, a string of familiar faces appeared one after another.

"Su-myeon! Han-su! You're really here! I'm not crazy, right?!"

"Detective! I came to the right place, didn't I?"

"……Ha, Su-myeon, you're here too. Thank god. Thank God."

Ha-min, Du-pal, Young-cheol.

One after another, faces caught between relief and terror filed in.

They barely needed to exchange a few words before they realized they were all in the same situation.

Three days had simply evaporated — with no memory of them — and someone precious had vanished as if into thin air.

"Kang, what's going on here?"

When the visibly unconnected group of people swarmed Han-su's desk, his senior, Detective Park, cautiously approached.

Some of them were crying, others looked like the life had drained from them — it was clearly not a normal sight.

But how could he possibly explain this?

People who couldn't even perceive Chief Yun's absence wouldn't believe a word of the story.

They'd be lucky not to end up in a mental hospital.

After a moment's thought, Han-su answered.

"……I'm taking a half day."

"What? Are you kidding me? This suddenly?!"

Han-su gathered his things and stood up.

"Let's talk outside."

No one objected.

Six people — different ages, genders, and demeanors — filed out of the police station together.

Now, where to have this irrational conversation?

"……Let's go to my place."

Su-myeon spoke with the expression of someone who'd just made a weighty decision.

With the memories of the hotel still vivid, the group agreed as though it were the obvious choice.