Chapter 27

Chapter 27 - Sadang Station Exit 4 (3)

[3. Flutesoundflutesoundflutesound]

Author: Anonymous

I can't get any further away, What's chasing me? Whose footsteps are these?

I should have turned back

I should have turned back

I need to turn back

I can't turn back

---

Their minds already made up, Su-myeon and Han-su pressed forward without stopping.

This too could perhaps be called a kind of bewitchment, but at least one thing was certain.

Neither Su-myeon nor Han-su could hear the flute anymore.

That meant they had at least avoided the most critical element of this place.

The Heartphone was displaying ominous warnings as if demanding they turn back immediately, but Su-myeon was certain.

He was still at a point where he could turn around.

Han-su followed Su-myeon's resolve as though it were only natural.

"......"

Su-myeon decided to stop doubting his own judgment and decisions.

Through his bare right eye, it was just a smooth tile wall in a subway corridor.

But through the eye fitted with the Cyclops Contact Lens, he could see a passage concealed behind drooping blood vessels.

He carefully reached his hand toward it, and it slid through to the other side.

"It's like...... a train platform to some magic school."

Of course, compared to that, there was no romance here—only a horrifying sensation against his skin.

Han-su didn't seem to understand Su-myeon's murmur, but he followed him through the tile wall.

After the irrational experience of passing through a wall, the two stepped into a new path.

The corridor was composed of the same tiles and ceiling as the infinitely repeating Exit 4 passage from before.

The only difference was that visibility was strangely narrow—only a few meters at most—before it trailed off into endless darkness.

"Are you sure it's safe to keep going?"

Su-myeon nodded at Han-su's question and carefully moved forward.

Through the truth revealed by the Cyclops Contact Lens, he could see massive blood vessels pulsing behind the tiles.

But for now, the pulsation was slow and steady, as if asleep.

"Let's move carefully."

Wary of disturbing them, the two walked into the darkness.

Before long, they caught sight of the man who had vanished ahead.

He was walking slowly with that awkward gait, so they caught up quickly.

But it wasn't just the man who appeared.

"......"

Su-myeon clapped a hand over his mouth without thinking.

Where the man had led them, there was a large thoroughfare that gathered countless branching passages—sprawling out like the limbs of a tree—into one.

And there, a massive crowd was walking in a single direction like a flowing tide.

Dozens—perhaps hundreds—of footsteps echoed through the corridor in an eerily synchronized rhythm.

Their gait felt like a procession of toy soldiers.

Unlike the disciplined march of real soldiers, these were lifeless, unnaturally stiff motions—limbs folding and straightening like hinges.

An uncountable number of people walking that way, all in one direction.

"Wait...!"

The shock barely had time to register before the swelling crowd had filled in behind Su-myeon and Han-su as well.

Glossy skin and eyes that looked as if they'd been crafted to pass for human, like eerily lifelike dolls.

Dozens of lifeless human forms simply walked onward.

'I'm going to lose him!'

Su-myeon grabbed Han-su and chased after Hyeon-seok in a frenzy—then suddenly realized something.

If that man really was someone from the real world, lost and trapped here.

"All these people—don't tell me, every single one of them......"

Someone's precious person. People who had vanished from reality without a trace.

The realization sent goosebumps crawling to the top of his scalp.

Repetitive footsteps produced by things that held not a shred of living vitality.

An endless cascade of sounds stretched into a grotesquely warped rhythm, like a broken gramophone playing on loop.

Were all of these really the footsteps of real people who had lost their sense of self, bewitched by some unknown phenomenon?

FWEE.

Just then, the flute—which had seemed to have cut off—sounded again.

The moment it did, every person's pace quickened simultaneously, as though they'd heard a subway arrival chime.

Su-myeon nearly got swept up in the crowd, but he fought to keep his balance among them and sprinted.

Thanks to Han-su following close behind to support him, Su-myeon was finally able to grab hold of the man.

'Executive Director Shin Hyeon-seok.'

Su-myeon snatched the employee ID from the man he'd seized.

He slightly regretted not asking Ju-hee for the name beforehand, but at least the title of Executive Director matched.

Could he hold onto this man and bring him back?

The moment that thought crossed his mind.

GRAB.

The man seized Su-myeon's hand—the one clutching the employee ID.

And then. A neck bent at an impossible angle.

An expressionless face, like a mannequin's, closed in until it was inches away.

"......,"

"......"

Eyes with an eerie, wax-like sheen stared at Su-myeon without blinking.

In the suffocating silence, Su-myeon swallowed hard as he met the man's gaze from point-blank range.

He thought their eyes had met, but something was off.

Like the eyes of a doll with no focal point, the man seemed to be staring straight at Su-myeon and yet was somehow vacant.

Still, what mattered was that his marionette-like stride had stopped.

"Can you...... speak?"

The instant Su-myeon asked, something seemed to crack and ripple through the man's pupils.

A pupillary response with a vitality that hadn't been there a moment ago.

"AAAAAAGH!"

Before he could even feel hope at it, a scream rang out from somewhere.

Every person packed into the space snapped their heads up to look in the direction of the sound.

The stranger—no, Shin Hyeon-seok—did the same.

The spark of life that had flickered just a moment ago vanished, and everyone moved as one, like uniform dolls.

"No! No! Stop! Help me!"

Someone's scream. A wail that went on and on.

As the commotion continued, the people who had jerked their heads up all moved at once.

They all charged toward the source of the sound, like hounds that had spotted prey.

Hyeon-seok was among them.

Han-su and Su-myeon tried to hold him, but only managed to tear his jacket slightly—he shook them off with unbelievable strength.

In the end, all that remained in Su-myeon's hand was the employee ID that could confirm his identity.

"Let go of me! Let me out! Let me—!"

And then the scream stopped.

Su-myeon felt a flash of futility at having come this far only to lose Hyeon-seok, but there was no time for that.

Han-su tried to go after the man again, but this time Su-myeon held him back.

"We can't. It's too dangerous."

What had been dozens in the crowd had become hundreds.

The subway-corridor-like scenery around them had shifted into something bizarrely different.

Before they knew it, garish, colorful decorations—like those of a worn-out, outdated theme park—covered the walls.

FWEE— FWEE.

The whistling flute grew louder and louder.

Su-myeon didn't want to ignore the post that had appeared on the Heartphone.

If the flute and the countless footsteps were blending together, going any deeper was likely to become dangerous.

They had to turn back while they still could.

"Going further in will put us at risk too."

On top of that, Su-myeon's left eye could see the blood vessels beyond the walls—no longer just pulsing, but writhing.

They looked as though they wanted to burst through the surrounding tiles and devour something right that instant.

Any further action wasn't a gamble—it was outright suicide.

Han-su looked as though he wanted to grab anyone within reach and drag them out, but Su-myeon didn't release his grip on Han-su's arm.

"You saw what just happened. We can't cause a commotion that draws attention. We have to go back quietly."

If Han-su had been alone, he might have been willing to take that risk.

But right now he wasn't alone, and any reckless move he made could endanger Su-myeon as well.

Han-su wasn't reckless enough to disregard that, so he reluctantly nodded.

Still, this trip hadn't been entirely fruitless.

Su-myeon held up Executive Director Shin Hyeon-seok's employee ID.

"For now, let's at least take this back and confirm what we can."

Confirming whether the multitudes here were real humans from the real world.

Establishing that alone held enough meaning.

The two sorted through their tangled emotions and quietly retraced their steps against the flow of the crowd.

Paths branched out in every direction, all of them pouring out with people, which made it confusing—but they found a way.

Through the lens on his left eye, Su-myeon was able to find the correct direction.

***

In front of Sadang Station, Exit 4.

Everyone who knew Su-myeon, Ju-hee included, sat slumped outside the grimy subway exit in despair.

"Damn it...."

"What the hell are we supposed to do...."

Could it be that Su-myeon and Han-su had vanished just like this too?

Fading into forgotten existences that no one remembered, just like the others?

If Su-myeon was gone now, what more could the rest of them possibly do?

Amid a spiral of bleak predictions, each one darker than the last—

"We're outside...!"

A familiar voice rang out.

That utterly ordinary voice they'd been so desperately searching for.

The group, who had been crouching in despair, all turned around at once.

There stood Su-myeon and Han-su, looking a bit worn out, emerging from Exit 4 and breathing in the open air deeply.

"Su-myeon!"

"Su-myeon hyung!"

Everyone sprang to their feet, calling out in relief.

Su-myeon and Han-su, appearing out of nowhere, looked startled instead.

"What? Why's everyone here?"

"It's...... four in the morning, you know?"

At Su-myeon and Han-su's words, Ha-min burst into tears again.

"We all thought you two had disappeared!"

At least they were in one piece—limbs intact, minds intact.

Seeing that, everyone breathed a massive sigh of relief.

Young-cheol was the first to compose himself and explained why they were all gathered here, which left Su-myeon flustered.

Were these people fearless or just reckless?

"What if you'd actually gotten pulled over into that world?! Why would you all do something this crazy?!"

"Is that really what matters right now?!"

Du-pal shouted back at Su-myeon and smacked him on the back.

Ju-hee, her eyes nearly brimming with tears, nodded in agreement.

"Everyone was worried about you. Let's just be grateful it all worked out. All of us."

No one else had gotten caught up in the urban legend, and the ones who had were back safe.

Watching Ju-hee express her gratitude for that, Su-myeon rummaged through his jacket pocket.

"There's something I need you to check, though."

He hesitated for a moment over how to bring it up, but decided to just show the employee ID first.

"We ran into someone in there."

Shinseong Group. Executive Director Shin Hyeon-seok.

The joy on Ju-hee's face from Su-myeon and Han-su's safe return froze in an instant.

A standard employee ID card with a photo of a clean-cut man.

Ju-hee's hand trembled faintly as she took the ID from Su-myeon.

"You...... met this person......?"

Her voice was shaking even more than her hand.

She repeated the word "met" several times under her breath, then lunged at Su-myeon with enough force to seize him by the collar.

"Where?! Where was he?! Was he in some weird place like that hotel?! Somewhere like that?!"

She was always bold and headstrong, but right now she was practically aggressive.

Han-su had to grab her and hold her back.

But to Su-myeon, her reaction sounded like an answer in itself, and his mood sank for a different reason.

"That person......"

Before Su-myeon could ask for confirmation, Ju-hee added urgently.

"That's right! He's the one I've been looking for!"

In a situation where his worst hunch had been confirmed—Su-myeon could neither rejoice nor grieve at this certainty.