Chapter 4: Daecheonmyeong, Specialists in Resolving Paranormal Cases

Two people had died.

One more was on the verge of death.

And I had lost a hand.

And now she was telling me I had passed?

As if my reaction didn’t matter to her in the slightest, Myeong Haebin calmly stretched out her arms, stepped over Lee Jaewon, who was still lying on the floor, and held out her hand to me.

“Allow me to introduce myself again. I’m Myeong Haebin, from Daecheonmyeong, Specialists in Resolving Paranormal Cases.”

What she held in her hand was an identification card.

Printed on the black plastic were the name Daecheonmyeong, her name, and her photograph.

Without a doubt, it was her.

But her words barely registered in my ears.

“Get lost. I never interviewed for a company like that.”

I took out my phone.

Now it really did seem like I was back in the real world.

I could call 119.

Explaining what had happened would be difficult, but at least I could get Lee Jaewon to a hospital.

“And what do you think they’ll be able to do for him at a hospital?”

“Save him.”

Myeong Haebin’s smile tilted slightly to one side.

Then she lowered her gaze toward Lee Jaewon, whose face was already unrecognizable.

“Anyone can see that his entire body was torn apart by bites from human teeth. And you, Boss, lost a hand.”

I raised my left arm, completely covered in blood, and opened and closed my fist several times.

As if I wanted to prove it to her.

“Even so, maybe modern medicine can still help him with skin grafts. But you, Boss, do you really want to spend the rest of your life with a prosthetic?”

“What are you trying to say?”

The Myeong Haebin standing before me no longer seemed like the person I knew.

She was cold.

Devoid of any trace of humanity.

“If you join our company, we can completely heal that hand. Much better than a prosthetic. Ah, and while we’re at it, him too.”

It was hard to believe that Haebin, who had always been so kind to everyone and so well-liked by everyone.

Could say something like that to me.

I lowered my gaze toward my motionless left arm.

“Haebin. Do you know what my dream is?”

I wasn’t expecting an answer.

With a bitter laugh, I continued speaking.

“To live a normal life. Work like anyone else. Buy a house with a bank loan. Have a dog. That was my dream.”

Just that.

Something anyone would consider boring and ordinary.

But for me.

It had been my lifelong dream.

How had I ended up like this?

Bzzzzz—

Like an unwelcome visitor, the phone vibrated again.

As if it already knew what my answer would be.

[Completion Condition: Join Daecheonmyeong, Specialists in Resolving Paranormal Cases.]

[Reward: Kim Hanmu’s left hand]

[If You Fail: Death]

“Kugh… Ghk…”

I heard Lee Jaewon’s agonized breathing.

Everything around me seemed to be forcing me to accept Haebin’s offer.

‘Why is it so hard to live a normal life…?’

I squeezed my eyes shut.

Before Lee Jaewon died, I forced out the words that seemed stuck in my throat.

“I’ll do it. But first… heal Jaewon.”

Myeong Haebin, who had been staring intently at me without taking her eyes off me for even a second, grinned from ear to ear.

“Really?! Of course! I’ll keep my promise!”

After closing the front door, Myeong Haebin inserted her black identification card over the doorknob.

Although a moment earlier the door had seemed like a completely solid slab of metal, it absorbed the card.

And opened on its own.

Several people wearing black masks walked inside without making the slightest sound.

Haebin, completely accustomed to them, began speaking to them.

“It’s this way. …He’s a civilian. The one standing over there is… …so…”

Even though she was right in front of me talking.

Entire parts of her sentences disappeared, as if someone had erased fragments of her voice.

Had I lost too much blood?

My vision began to blur.

My knees stopped supporting me.

And my consciousness faded away.

The last thing I remember.

Was Myeong Haebin’s whisper as she caught my swaying body.

“What a relief. I didn’t want to have to kill you, Boss.”

It was an impossible sentence to forget.

***

“…Hah!”

When I regained consciousness, I was in an unfamiliar room.

There was only a bed, a bookshelf, and a desk.

Everything looked completely new.

And the atmosphere was strangely cold.

‘Where the hell am I…?’

I picked up the phone that had been placed neatly on the desk.

There was a sticky note attached to it.

Boss, since I saw that you kept looking at your phone, I checked it just in case. There’s nothing wrong with it, so you can use it without worrying. — Haebin

I had no idea what exactly she meant by saying she had checked it.

And she said there was nothing wrong with it?

[Congratulations on completing your onboarding into the company.]

The moment I saw the white text projected against the black screen, a chill ran through my entire body and the memories of the previous day came rushing back all at once.

Of course.

I had agreed to work at Daecheonmyeong, Specialists in Resolving Paranormal Cases.

And then.

[The reward has been delivered.]

That’s right.

My hand.

What had happened to my left hand?

I jumped out of bed and raised my arm.

My left hand was completely intact, as if it had never been amputated.

“…Ah, thank goodness.”

Only after touching it over and over again was I able to calm down.

It was impossible to forget the moment it had disappeared with a single bite.

Much less the pain.

Then.

What exactly was that application?

Had the company created it?

It didn’t seem like it.

In that house, Myeong Haebin had never taken out her phone.

[ ]

The application, whose black icon had no name, still displayed nothing but a completely black screen.

No matter how many times I tapped it.

It didn’t respond.

“Do you belong to this company too?”

……

Haha.

I really had gone crazy after all.

How could a phone possibly answer me?

And yet I was talking to it like an idiot.

“I thought so…”

[That is not an important question.]

A single line of text appeared with perfect clarity.

Had it really just answered me?

[You have only one answer remaining.]

My hands began to tremble.

I had dozens of questions.

But I could only ask one.

All traces of sleepiness vanished at once as my mind desperately searched for the best option.

If it said questions about the company weren’t important.

Then.

“What do you want from me?”

[For Kim Hanmu to continue cleaning “paranormal phenomena.”]

The text disappeared like a mirage.

“…Hah.”

I felt a knot tighten in my chest.

I almost would have preferred it if it had asked for my life.

No.

Maybe this was actually better.

It meant that application needed me.

As long as I remained in this company.

It could keep helping me.

Just as it had in that house.

‘But now they’ve already given me my hand back. They already got everything they wanted from me. If I said, well, thank you very much, now I’m going home…’

‘They wouldn’t let me, would they?’

Haebin had said it.

That she didn’t want to have to kill me.

That cliché existed for a reason.

“You know too much.”

Bang.

Better not to invite unnecessary trouble.

Creeeak.

Still completely tense, I opened the door to the room.

On the other side was a living room just as cold as the bedroom.

The lights were off.

It looked like a completely normal home.

“Fuck… That scared me.”

I jumped in surprise when the automatic entryway light suddenly turned on.

On the floor were only my shoes, perfectly clean and lined up.

“……”

Creeak.

I cautiously poked my head out into the hallway.

It was a gray and gloomy corridor.

There weren’t too many people.

But there were people walking through it.

“I’m dead tired. My night shift ran straight into the morning shift, and I didn’t even get to rest.”

“Then transfer to the Dismantling Team.”

“No way. I want to live a long life without drawing attention to myself.”

People holding coffee.

Completely normal conversations.

Since this was supposedly a company dedicated to paranormal phenomena, I had been prepared for anything.

But.

It seemed much more normal than I had expected.

Only then was I able to relax my shoulders a little and keep walking.

Shortly afterward.

The hallway opened into an enormous space.

“…Wow.”

〈At the end of every night, there is always dawn. We are the ones who behold that dawn.〉

The circular plaza was gigantic.

The ceiling was so high that I couldn’t even see it.

Enormous carved columns, so thick that not even four grown men could wrap their arms around them, supported the entire structure.

Compared to the hallway from before.

There were a lot more people here.

They all wore similar uniforms and hurried back and forth.

Wait.

Where was I supposed to go now?

All I knew was that I had been hired.

I had no idea about anything else.

Just as I was thinking about stopping someone to ask…

A large hand slapped me on the shoulder.

“Hey, are you new? What are you doing standing around here instead of going in?”

“Huh? Well… yeah, I guess…”

He was a middle-aged man with dark stubble already visible across his skin.

Unlike me, who was only wearing a white T-shirt, he wore a work uniform with blue stripes.

“Going in where?”

“To the new employee orientation and team assignments, of course. What’s wrong? Don’t tell me you lost the others.”

“No, it’s just that I didn’t…”

“What do you mean you didn’t?”

The man let out a booming laugh.

Then he grabbed me by the shoulder with complete familiarity and started walking.

“Wake up. I’m sure you ended up here for some reason too. Bah, never mind. Even if I explained it to you a hundred times, you wouldn’t understand.”

“I know dealing with paranormal phenomena isn’t exactly easy.”

“You talk like you’ve already been through one.”

The man raised one of his thick eyebrows.

He looked at me as if I were a chick that knew nothing about the world.

Well.

Within this company, I suppose he was right.

But I had also risked my life to make it out of one alive.

“Once…”

I couldn’t exactly start bragging in front of someone who was clearly a veteran.

So I gave him an evasive answer.

Then he seemed to realize something and pointed at me.

“Ah. You’re the special case Haebin brought in?”

“You know Haebin?”

“Of course I do! What a coincidence running into you. Come join our team.”

“I don’t even know who you are.”

“Me? I’m Team Leader Yong, from the Dismantling Team.”

I was about to ask what exactly the Dismantling Team was.

When we found ourselves in front of a conference room.

(Daecheonmyeong New Employee Orientation)

“…Some of you may have come because you need money. Others because you’re interested in paranormal phenomena themselves. And others because you’re pursuing a wish that’s impossible to fulfill.”

Through a small window, Myeong Haebin could be seen standing on the stage beside a banner.

Her clear voice echoed throughout the room.

“Well, that was just my wish. Let’s go in.”

Team Leader Yong opened the door and gently pushed me forward by the back.

Since the entrance was located at the rear of the room, we went unnoticed.

We managed to sit in the last row.

But apparently.

I really was late.

“All right! Any questions?”

The orientation was already over.

The question-and-answer session had begun.

“Is it true that the Exploration Team receives a higher salary bonus?”

“About the types of paranormal phenomena you mentioned a moment ago…”

The others, like me, were wearing only white T-shirts.

One after another, they raised their hands to ask questions.

Most of them were things I didn’t even understand.

“Bad luck. You missed the entire orientation.”

I thought Team Leader Yong would leave.

But he remained seated beside me, laughing in amusement.

“I’ll just ask Haebin about it later.”

“Why make things difficult for yourself? You’ve got an excellent veteran right here.”

Excellent?

Rather than an exemplary veteran.

He looked like some random middle-aged guy sprawled on his couch at home, flipping through channels with the remote.

Though I shouldn’t judge people by appearances either.

“What exactly does this company do?”

“Oh. Now that’s a basic and very important question.”

Team Leader Yong rubbed his hands together, satisfied.

Then he cleared his throat before answering.

“You see. Daecheonmyeong is a company that sends its employees directly to confront paranormal phenomena in order to resolve them.”

“Sends them directly?”

“That’s right. Because that’s the only way to resolve a paranormal phenomenon.”

“And can employees die during that process too?”

“Why do you always go straight for the sorest spot? That hurts, kid.”

He didn’t answer explicitly.

But in practice.

That was a yes.

Even so, there was something I didn’t understand.

“Then why do something like that?”

Why keep working here knowing they could die?

Was it because, once you were inside, the only way out was by dying?

If that was the reason.

I could understand it.

Team Leader Yong stroked his rough chin before answering.

“Because if we do nothing, paranormal phenomena will eventually devour innocent people. We’re here to prevent that.”

“Just because of that?”

“At least I am.”

I still had many questions.

But Myeong Haebin’s voice, as she continued answering the new employees’ questions, echoed through the room again.

“All right. We’ll now begin the team assignments.”

A moment ago, Team Leader Yong had invited me to join his team.

But.

Now that I thought about it.

Hadn’t I heard earlier that the Dismantling Team was especially dangerous?