Light filled my vision.
The ear-splitting cacophony of the shaking building vanished, replaced by a momentary void, as if all my senses had been severed.
When the sensation of floating in mid-air ceased and I opened my eyes,
Neither the office nor the ghastly entity remained before me.
“Is it over?”
The time was evening, painted with the hues of a sunset.
Amidst a desolate construction site, she and I stood.
Her face, still clutching her sword, wore a bewildered expression, as if she hadn’t yet processed the situation.
A smile involuntarily bloomed on my face at the sight of her.
She, too, bore the clear marks of battle across her entire body.
Soon, her gaze, which had been scanning her surroundings, met mine, and she wiped the blood from her face with her forearm, smiling brightly.
Though her face was smeared and messy with blood, it hardly mattered.
“It’s over!”
She plunged her sword into the ground, then, announcing the end, spread her arms wide and collapsed backward.
“Phew… I really thought I was going to die. The man-faced gorillas suddenly went berserk, and if I had been just a moment slower… Ugh—”
I walked over to her and slumped down beside her.
‘This suit is expensive, though.’
I didn’t care.
As soon as I lay back, all strength drained from my body.
Even with the assurance of auto-save, the psychological toll remained.
Manually delivering letters, sprinting to the 15th floor, evading the clutches of the dolls, and even engaging in a psychological battle with the man-faced monkeys.
My ordinary human stamina had long since reached its limit.
I had simply endured, pushing through by sheer willpower.
“Still,”
I merely shifted my gaze at her voice.
Her fist, raised toward the sky, caught my eye.
“Don’t you think our teamwork was pretty good for an impromptu team? Don’t you?”
I raised my fist and met hers.
“I agree.”
After that, neither of us spoke.
We remained there for a long while.
As my breathing steadied, strength gradually returned to my muscles.
Slowly, I pushed myself up into a sitting position.
I could feel her turning her head to watch my movements.
“Could I perhaps ask you for one favor?”
It was something that had been on my mind since I first drafted my resignation letter.
It concerned the letters.
No matter how I considered it, it hardly seemed appropriate for me, a mere civilian, to personally deliver letters from those who had gone missing years ago.
Especially not dozens, or even hundreds, of letters.
Thus,
“What is it? Tell me. I’ll grant almost any request you have!”
“Then… would you be able to deliver these letters to the bereaved families?”
“…Letters?”
I briefly explained the situation to her, who looked puzzled.
“Actually, when I was using the work computer earlier, I discovered letters left behind by people who had visited this company before. It might be meddling, but still.”
I looked at her.
“I wish to deliver these letters for those who might still be waiting for them.”
She stared at me, speechless for a moment.
With a gasp, she rose, then pulled out a pen and a notebook from her pocket.
“If it’s for something like that! I’ll gladly do it. That’s not even a favor. It’s nothing at all.”
Seeing her expectant gaze, I immediately began.
“First, Song Inkyung. Joined in April 2021. Paju City, Gyeonggi Province… The content of the letter is… this. And next is—”
The sound of her writing echoed for a while, then, just as I was about to speak again, I turned my head at her urgent voice.
“W-Wait a minute!”
She was looking at me, beads of cold sweat trickling down her face.
Her notebook was already densely filled with writing.
“If you missed any parts, I can repeat them for you.”
She held out her hand, stopping me.
“It’s not that. Do you happen to know how many of those letters there are?”
‘The number?’
The Recorder’s Pen.
The number written in the upper right corner caught my eye.
“…14231.”
Her eyes, as they met mine, changed, as if seeing something incomprehensible.
“Are you saying… Alpha, you remember all of that right now?”
I couldn’t lie here.
“Not just the addresses… but the entire content of the letters too?”
The letters were the last records left by the victims.
Things that could not be changed by a single character, and had to be delivered perfectly.
…There’s no other way.
It was time for another ‘genius cosplay.’
“I just.”
“Just?”
“They just… came to me.”
I uttered it nonchalantly.
As if it were truly insignificant, as if I were stating something utterly trivial, with a calm demeanor.
“Do you think that’s as easy as it sounds? The number of characters in just one letter alone—”
“Hmm. Is that so? It wasn’t particularly difficult for me.”
For a moment, a look crossed her face as if she had just encountered the most insufferable person imaginable.
****
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[Ghastly Broadcast: Code 120053]
[Broadcast Time 07:15:12]
[The broadcast will end soon.]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
As the broadcast screen turned off, the Ghastly Gallery fell into silence.
[NotHuman]: …
[Veteran84]: …
[NoAnswerLife]: …
[HeavenBreaker]: …
[FutureSCP]: Is that my mom?
It hadn’t been like this from the start.
When the newbie first entered the building, the gallery was, quite literally, ablaze with the opposite sentiment.
From NoAnswerLife and NotHuman’s private gambling,
To people who had entered ‘appreciation mode,’ watching as if it were a captivating spectacle.
[Foodie]: I’ve been bored lately, but this gave me a dopamine rush hahaha.
[KyaruIsTruth]: Seriously, the commute to the Bureau was so dull.
[Visionary]: But this is a newbie I’ve never seen before? Wasn’t the last one 119532?
ㄴ[FearfulCyclops]: Grandpa, in what era are you still living?
[BystanderPossessed]: Ah. Seeing a newbie die gives me bad dreams. I should hurry and get some popcorn.
[LmaoPpbong]: Lol, is today a holiday? The viewer count is insane.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[Live Viewers: 531]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Already, the number of broadcast viewers had reached nearly half of the Ghastly Gallery’s total users, less than 10 minutes after the broadcast began.
Newbie120053, who had emerged after clearing the ‘Gyeonggi Gwangju Station Ghastly Tale,’ was so famous that almost no one in the gallery was unfamiliar with their name.
Despite their recruit number clearly indicating them as a newbie,
Their actions showed a skill level that surpassed even hardened veterans.
As late-joining users gradually streamed into the broadcast, the viewer count eventually exceeded half.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[Live Viewers: 612]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
However, despite the fervent interest, few actually held high expectations for the newbie.
While their track record of clearing the ‘Gyeonggi Gwangju Station Ghastly Tale’ sparked curiosity,
almost no one believed it would lead to clearing the current ghastly tale.
Most simply watched the broadcast with the gaze of an explorer, hoping to gain some hints or clues.
‘New Employee’s First Day’ Ghastly Tale.
No Ghastly Gallery user was unaware of this tale.
Numerous recruits had challenged it and never returned, with dozens of videos documenting their attempts stored in the gallery.
And those videos always pointed to the same conclusion:
Impossibility.
It was deemed that this ghastly tale could never be cleared by a solo player or a small group of two.
While ostensibly a Stage 2, its actual latent danger was far greater.
Moreover, this ghastly tale belonged to a rare category of ‘growth-type’ anomalies.
As the number of employees grew, so did the company’s scale, and in some timelines, it had even reached Stage 3 — ‘Disappearance-class.’
At that time, the company had expanded to the size of dozens of Olympic stadiums combined.
Considering the dangers lurking within and the number of employees, at a minimum, over a hundred people, a large-scale investigation team, would be required to adequately respond to this ghastly tale.
The problem lay with the invitation.
The invitation for this ghastly tale was randomly sent to those who were ‘unemployed.’
These two conditions completely prevented the deployment of a sufficient number of investigators.
A seemingly insurmountable fortress wall.
Indeed, that wall,
Began to tremble the moment Newbie120053 stepped into the building, shaking the lofty prestige the ghastly tale had accumulated.
The newbie never once sought help through the gallery.
They acted solely based on their own judgment.
Despite the inevitability of biases in thought or overlooked details,
Without a single mistake, he approached the correct answers with only tiny clues.
The start time for work.
He grasped this rule through the names and blocked the substitute.
The receiver.
He understood the role of the intercom and found the hidden rules on the monitor.
The 15th floor.
He realized that floors 1-14 were nothing but traps within 30 minutes of entering.
The emergency staircase.
He instinctively sensed the threat.
He deliberately caused a fire inside the building to lure the ghastly entities.
It was almost unbelievable.
No major crisis or danger approached Newbie120053 until he reached the 15th floor.
[CreamBread]: Wow – this is super fun. But when does this movie come out?
ㄴ[Knight]: Come out?
ㄴ[CreamBread]: Yeah, isn’t this a movie?
ㄴ[Knight]: It’s a live broadcast?
ㄴ[CreamBread]: ?
ㄴ[Knight]: ?
[CreamBread]: That? The cool dialogue they’re exchanging, the 멋진 웃음 (TL Note: ‘meotjin useum,’ meaning a cool, stylish, or handsome laugh) as they climb the stairs. That’s not a movie, it’s a documentary and a live broadcast?
Soon, a monster of relative deprivation descended upon the numerous users who watched the footage.
[Title: lollllllll]
—Author: OldestGhastlyGalleryMember
Some people get into knife fights over a single protein bar.
They wouldn’t even turn their backs on each other, fearing a knife in their spine at any moment.
ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
Go up first?
This is my role?
You guys are just going to turn around and stab me, aren’t you? Right? Right? Right?
Ah.
No, wait.
…I got the wrong gallery, didn’t I?
This isn’t really the Ghastly Gallery, is it? It’s like a Magical Girl Gallery or a RoFan (TL Note: Short for Romance-Fantasy) Gallery, isn’t it?
I know it all ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
[NotHuman]: That’s right. This is the RoFan Gallery. Just click the ‘Exit Ghastly Gallery’ button in the top right.
[PoisonousChingbung]: Did you also get stung by the saliva?
[RealReal]: LOL, for real.
[Title: Suddenly hit with a strong wave of Sage Time.]
—Author: MuscleGrowth.
Seeing that high school girl just now,
I realized how weak I am.
Going to hit the weights hard.
[Organism]: …? Sir, is that all you felt?
ㄴ[MuscleGrowth]: Of course. What else would I feel? Ah, there is one thing.
ㄴ[Organism]: At least you’re human.
ㄴ[MuscleGrowth]: Newbie120053 in that broadcast? His judgment and everything else are good. But he lacks just one thing: muscles! He’s out of breath there? I seriously want to lock him in solitary confinement, feed him nothing but protein bars, and make him do weights for a whole month. For real.
ㄴ[Organism]: Perhaps you should just pass. That seems appropriate.
[Title: One-line Summary]
—Author: SeriousGuy
……lol
I’ve made a slight revision.
I forgot to unfold the paper earlier.
[Veteran84]: How can someone who’s been playing for less than a month be worse than a newbie?
ㄴ[NotHuman]: …A month?
ㄴ[Veteran84]: …A week.
ㄴ[NotHuman]: …A—week?
ㄴ[Veteran84]: Damn it, three days.
ㄴ[NotHuman]: …Th—ree days?
ㄴ[Veteran84]: Stop it, you lunatic!
