By the time they returned from sub-space, it was late evening.
I briefly checked the sales status of the Rocket Store.
Over the course of one day, sales had increased significantly as large orders related to the war paint and the Agnes Holy Knights were finalized.
In particular, the improved war paint was showing steady sales as word of mouth spread among the Hunters.
“It’s quite decent. A stable profit structure has been established.”
It was at a level where the effort put in didn’t feel wasted.
“Guardian, what would you like for dinner?” Aria asked, pointing toward the kitchen.
“Hmm, maybe I’ll just boil some ramen. I’ve been looking at delicious dishes all day, so I’m actually craving something simple.”
“Great! I love ramen too!”
After eating dinner with Aria, the time passed in the blink of an eye as I wound down the day by watching the news on TV. It was already nearing 12:00 AM.
“I should get ready for bed soon.”
Just as the clock hit midnight, a notification rang out.
**[Horror creator Han Seo-yeon’s broadcast has begun]**
“Huh? At midnight?”
It was much later than usual. Han Seo-yeon normally started her broadcasts before the sun went down, so starting at midnight was a first.
“Guardian, is that Han Seo-yeon’s broadcast?”
“Yeah.”
“But Aria, is it okay for you to watch at this hour? Aren’t you scared?”
“Psh. I’m fine! You’re right here next to me, Guardian.”
Aria answered bravely, but as soon as I pulled up the hologram screen, she immediately hid behind my back.
“What gives? I thought you weren’t scared.”
“I’m not! It’s just… this is a comfortable angle to watch from!”
[Hello, subscribers! Thanks to the information I worked hard to collect in the village, I’ve finally found the key. Today, I can finally enter Building B of the abandoned hospital! I will now begin the exploration in earnest.]
Han Seo-yeon held up the key she had acquired and opened the entrance door to Building B. As the door opened with a creak, an eerie atmosphere flowed out from the building.
[I’ll start by exploring the first floor. The atmosphere is definitely a lot different than during the day. This looks like a pharmacy.]
As Seo-yeon stepped into the pharmacy, a shadow could be seen moving in the darkness.
[It looks like someone is here.]
As the flashlight beam hit the figure, the appearance of a young man in a pharmacist’s coat was revealed. Black saliva was constantly dripping from his mouth, and his eyes were staring into space, out of focus.
“…Ugh.”
Aria made a strange noise and hid behind my back, but she kept her head peeked out to continue watching the screen.
The pharmacist Anomaly was mechanically repeating the same action. He would pour a black liquid into a transparent medicine bottle, dump it out, and then pour it in again.
[I can’t… let that medicine… happen.]
His muttering voice was broken and mangled, making it difficult to understand the sentences perfectly.
[No… No! I have to tell them no!]
Then, the pharmacist Anomaly suddenly became violent. He began slamming medicine bottles onto the floor and snatching prescriptions off the desk to hurl them down.
“What is that?”
Aria gripped my shoulder tightly.
However, Han Seo-yeon was surprisingly calm on the screen. In fact, she moved so boldly that I wondered if she was really okay.
[You don’t need to worry. These types of Anomalies repeat the habits they had when they were alive. Unless you hit a specific trigger, they don’t really react to their surroundings.]
Seo-yeon waited, catching her breath for a moment while the pharmacist Anomaly was busy throwing prescriptions, and approached as closely as possible. A short while later, when the pharmacist Anomaly’s movements returned to being mechanical, Seo-yeon carefully collected the prescription fragments that had fallen to the floor.
[Some strange drugs are prescribed here. I don’t know much about these, so I’ll have to look them up later.]
Leaving the pharmacy, Seo-yeon examined the prescription fragments in detail and showed them to the camera.
[There are several drug names written here, but I’m not sure what they are. Is there anyone among the subscribers who can tell me what kind of drugs these are?]
— Hold on. I’ll look them up.
I hurriedly searched the internet. As I looked up the drugs written on the prescription one by one, the results came up.
— Midazolam, Triazolam, Quetiapine, Zolpidem, and Chlorpromazine. These are all sedatives or drugs with strong tranquilizing effects. But the dosages are way too high. It says they cause severe drowsiness and comas as side effects.
[Then… could these prescriptions be related to a crime? It seems like someone was instructing excessive drug administration to make the patients fall into a deep sleep. And it looks like the pharmacist was trying to refuse it.]
Then, the contents of one of the quests were checked off.
**[Track the disappearance of hospital staff (1/3)]**
Seo-yeon’s expression darkened.
[What were they trying to do with that? Were they really doing something terrible to the patients? I’ll search the building more to get closer to the truth.]
As she went up to the second floor, a strange sound was heard from the hallway.
*Squelch, squelch…*
It was the sound of someone mopping. Following the flashlight beam, a middle-aged woman was mopping the floor with a large mop. However, what was coming from the mop wasn’t water, but pitch-black blood.
[…Dirty… go… dirty…]
She was wandering around the area with a garbled voice, continuously mopping the same hallway. When Seo-yeon went around behind her, several hands growing from the Anomaly’s back were seen holding dry mops and scrubbing the walls.
“Ugh.”
Aria made a gagging sound.
[This person is also repeating her daily routine from when she was alive. It seems like she witnessed something horrific and keeps trying to clean it up.]
Seo-yeon carefully observed the surroundings so as not to provoke the Anomaly. She discovered that the cleaning lady Anomaly was only mopping a specific area.
[Is there some special meaning to that spot?]
Seo-yeon took advantage of a gap when the Anomaly moved away to examine the area closely. A name tag was lying on the floor.
“She’s good at finding those things.”
“I know, right? I can’t even look because of all the blood,” Aria replied.
[Building B, Room 305, Kim So-young. Does this mean I should go to this hospital room?]
Then, Seo-yeon discovered a cleaning log attached to the wall and quickly snatched it while the Anomaly was looking elsewhere.
[There’s a cleaning log here. It says that on a day she happened to leave work late, she heard a strange sound from the basement. She informed a security guard, but it’s written that she was scared because that guard went missing shortly after… and there’s a record that she ran into the Director, who strangely stayed late without going home.]
**[Track the disappearance of hospital staff (2/3)]**
Seo-yeon’s voice became increasingly serious.
[Was it the Director’s doing…?]
Seo-yeon moved again to find more clues. While climbing the stairs to reach Room 305 as written on the name tag, she encountered an Anomaly wearing a security guard uniform this time.
Insects were crawling in and out of various parts of the uniform, and a bundle of keys was gruesomely embedded directly into his wrist bones. When the security guard Anomaly spotted Seo-yeon, his neck turned 180 degrees and he made a terrifying sound.
[…No entry… without… permission…]
“Aah!”
Aria didn’t fail to scream this time either. She was quite the coward. She got startled by every single thing that appeared. For someone who produced horror movies or games, wouldn’t Aria be the perfect customer?
“If you’re scared, why don’t you stop watching? I’ll tell you how it ends.”
“No… I’m still curious!”
There was one more thing: Aria was also very curious.
In the meantime, Seo-yeon observed the security guard Anomaly’s movements, and when the Anomaly looked elsewhere for a moment, she quickly snatched a key from the bundle. She was relentless.
[I’ve obtained the key to Building C, which was my goal! I’ll get out of here quickly while the guard is still on patrol.]
The security guard Anomaly continued his patrol mechanically, unaware that Seo-yeon had taken the key.
[Now I can go to Building C. But I think it’s better to look for more clues here before I go.]
While looking around, Seo-yeon discovered a patrol log that seemed to have been dropped by the guard.
[Looking here… it says the police visited because problems were found in the discharge procedures for some patients. It seems the patients didn’t have a normal discharge but just went missing. It says the Director instructed him not to tell anyone and to keep quiet for the time being. The back page is missing. It seems he went missing right after, just like the cleaning lady said.]
**[Track the disappearance of hospital staff (3/3)]**
She looked around the rest of the third floor after that, but didn’t find any useful clues. There was only one hospital room left. At the end of the hallway, it was Room 305, the one written on the name tag.
[This seems to be the room of the patient named Kim So-young, whose name was on the tag.]
Inside the room, a young girl in a hospital gown was sitting on the bed. However, the child didn’t even look at Seo-yeon and was constantly drawing something on the wall. Her fingertips were charred black, and she was using them to write numbers. She seemed to be smiling faintly, but upon closer inspection, her mouth was a torn wound.
[9182105 6231. 9182105 6231.]
She was writing the same numbers over and over again. The entire wall of the hospital room was filled with those numbers.
[Strange numbers are being repeated. 9182105 6231. It seems to have some meaning, but I have no idea. It doesn’t look like a phone number. Does anyone among the subscribers know what these numbers mean?]
For the first time since subscribing to Seo-yeon, the chat window began to scroll.
…But why can’t I read any of this? It’s giving me chills.
“……Guardian, what does the chat say? I can’t read a single word.”
“Same here. It’s all garbled, like there’s noise over it.”
There was no prompt to pay an additional information fee either. So, I tried to ignore the chat window and focused on the meaning of the numbers. There had to be a meaning. Could there be a clue that hadn’t been discovered yet?
— Could you look around the surroundings a bit more?
[The surroundings?]
— I feel like there’s a clue hidden that hasn’t been found yet.
Seo-yeon seemed puzzled, but she scanned the room at my request. There didn’t seem to be any other clues in the hospital room, but when she shone the flashlight I sent her under the bed, a glint of light reflected off of something.
[Oh? There really is something.]
Seo-yeon reached under the bed and pulled something out. It was an old silver feature phone.
“Wow! Guardian, you have such sharp eyes!”
“It’s nothing.”
Living as a shut-in, there wasn’t a game I hadn’t played in my spare time. Naturally, I had played horror games without exception. This much was easy.
“I thought there would be a related clue from the moment that child started writing numbers.”
Seo-yeon also pressed the power button of the feature phone with an interested expression. Perhaps because the hint was correct, the screen turned on.
[It still works. I wonder if there’s some clue stored on this phone?]
Seo-yeon checked the contact list first, but nothing was stored.
[Hmm… there are no saved phone numbers or messages. I wonder if there are any speed dials set?]
She tried pressing 9-1, but there was no response. 8-2-1 was the same.
[That’s strange. There must be something…]
While Seo-yeon was lost in thought, an idea suddenly occurred to me.
— Miss Seo-yeon, could you show the keypad of that feature phone closely to the camera?
[The keypad? Yes, just a moment.]
Seo-yeon brought the feature phone close to the camera and showed the keypad. The layout of the feature phone’s keypad appeared clearly on the screen:
”’
1 (|) 2 (•) 3 (—)
4 (G, K) 5 (N, L) 6 (D, T)
7 (B, P) 8 (S, H) 9 (J, Ch)
* ( ) 0 (Empty) # ( )
”’
— This looks like the clue we were looking for. Try entering those numbers directly using the Cheon-ji-in input method.
Seo-yeon opened a message window on the feature phone and began pressing the numbers one by one.
[9… 1… 8… 2… 1.. 0.. 5… 6… 2… 3…. 1….]
Letters began to appear one by one on the feature phone screen.
[Oh? Korean characters are actually coming out! ‘Ji’ ‘ha’ ‘an’ ‘doe’.]
Seo-yeon read the completed sentence in surprise.
[It means ‘No basement’!]
**[Additional clue obtained: Deciphering the girl’s encrypted message complete]**
[This is different from the clues we’ve obtained so far. Until now, I thought something had happened on the third floor of Building B. Is there something in the basement too?]
‘Isn’t the development obvious?’ I thought.
But Seo-yeon’s thoughts seemed to be different.
[Subscribers, please let me hear your opinions. Right now, I have two choices. I can go to the third floor of Building C and follow the existing clues, or I can explore the basement despite the girl’s warning. Which way should I go first?]
The chat window exploded in an instant. Comments began to scroll up at a rapid pace. Of course, I couldn’t understand any of them. I also actively made my appeal.
— Definitely go to the third floor of Building C first! Looking at the clichés of all horror games and movies, the basement is the most dangerous place. You shouldn’t go without enough information and preparation!
[Oh! Many people are recommending the third floor of Building C. That certainly seems like the safer choice.]
Seo-yeon nodded and made her decision.
[Then, I will start by exploring the third floor of Building C.]
I had intended to go to sleep soon before I started watching Seo-yeon’s broadcast, but now, I couldn’t think of anything else but watching this until the end.
There goes my sleep for tonight.