Chapter 3: I Want to Quit

‘Let’s quit.’

At this point, I had completely accepted that this was neither a dream nor a hallucination.

‘Even if it feels hopeless, this is the right choice.’

Any sane person, no matter how good the conditions were, would never want to work at a company infested with monsters like this.

Who cares about 68 million won a year.

Nothing could possibly be worth more than my own life.

‘How should I say it…?’

Making the decision was surprisingly easy.

But actually opening my mouth and saying I wanted to quit was something completely different.

Especially when your boss was a monster.

‘Huu.’

I exhaled inwardly while maintaining my composure.

What would be the most natural way to say it?

Would it seem less suspicious if I casually brought it up in the middle of a conversation?

Or should I put on a serious expression and say it directly?

If I said I wanted to quit, would those seven mouths bite me all at once?

I still didn’t even know which of the fourteen eyes I was supposed to look at while speaking.

One face was watching the news, another was reading a newspaper, another was drinking coffee through a straw, and another was glancing at me from the corner of its eye.

And there I was, trying to figure out the right timing to speak while staring at that thing.

It made absolutely no sense.

I couldn’t delay it any longer.

Right now, this was exactly the kind of impossible situation that went beyond human capability.

Should I stay silent and slowly break apart until I died?

Or speak up and end up torn to pieces by monsters?

Rather, for the first time, an opportunity had finally appeared where I could die proudly believing I had at least done my best.

I stood up and approached Manager Myeon.

The irregular breathing of his many faces leaked out like a horrible cacophony.

When I stopped beside him, Manager Myeon slowly rotated in his chair.

More precisely, some of his seven faces did.

“Is something wrong, Employee Jeong?”

The most normal and human-looking face spoke.

I answered calmly, honestly, and with complete sincerity.

“I want to quit.”

The air in the office seemed to freeze for an instant.

The seven faces looked at me one after another.

Suspicion, disappointment, anger, mockery, fear, curiosity, indifference.

All of those emotions passed through me one by one.

In the silence before the storm, the final expression shared by all the faces converged into a single emotion.

Displeasure.

“…Did you say… quit?”

It was an emotion so clear there was absolutely no room for misunderstanding.

The moment I said it, I felt my reason slowly returning.

I wiped away the sweat beginning to run down my skin again and forced the trembling corners of my lips into place.

‘I have to answer.’

Because I hated both working for monsters and working alongside monsters.

I lifted my head and looked toward Manager Myeon’s face with the most apologetic expression I could fake.

“Yes. I think I need to leave this job.”

“From your very first day? You haven’t even completed your training or orientation yet….”

“I’m sorry. Something urgent came up. I just received the news.”

“News? Is it a family matter?”

One of the faces asked.

I couldn’t tell exactly which face the voice came from.

I answered without hesitation.

“Yes. I received news that my mother collapsed due to a chronic illness… it seems her condition is serious.”

It was a lie.

I couldn’t even remember the face of that so-called mother.

Silence lingered for several seconds.

One of Manager Myeon’s faces slowly nodded.

“A family matter… I understand. What a shame. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen such a promising talent.”

Wasn’t he accepting it a little too easily considering what he looked like?

The faces genuinely seemed disappointed.

Then Manager Myeon calmly opened a drawer and handed me a small card.

“The Human Resources Department is on Basement Level 3. The elevator normally doesn’t go that far down, so use this.”

The card was metallic and completely blank.

But the instant I took it, an unpleasant chill spread across my skin.

“Yes… thank you.”

I slightly bowed my head in gratitude, and all seven of Manager Myeon’s faces smiled at the same time.

The corners of their mouths tore all the way to their ears, some narrowed their eyes, while others revealed huge grins filled with teeth.

The fact that every single one of them was showing friendly expressions for the first time left behind a deeply unpleasant and uncanny feeling.

***

Tap.

The moment I stepped out of the office, the hallway was as silent as a graveyard.

‘What is this? Why?’

Suppressing my impatience, I stopped in front of the elevator at the end of the hallway.

When I held the blank card over the scanner, the doors opened quietly.

The instant I stepped inside, the elevator began descending without any vibration at all, even though I hadn’t pressed a single button.

For some reason, it felt as though something was lightly tapping against my skin from the inside.

‘Whatever. I don’t know why, but I’m quitting and going straight home. This is just some horrible nightmare or some kind of illness.’

The elevator doors opened.

Unlike the brightly lit office, Basement Level 3 had no light.

No—
perhaps it did, but it felt like my eyes were incapable of interpreting it.

As if I could only perceive it as a sensation rather than actual color.

I carefully took a step forward.

The floor was damp, and beneath my feet came the sound of stepping into a puddle.

On the hallway walls, instead of the words “Human Resources,” there were blurry stains resembling smeared ink.

When I arrived in front of the door, someone was already there.

As if she had noticed me approaching, the crouched figure near the door violently raised her head like someone having a seizure.

“Hi, hiiik! Don’t come closer!”

It was an unfamiliar woman.

She was wearing a suit, but several buttons had been torn off, and her knees were scraped raw and pale.

And the only thought that crossed my mind when I saw her was—

‘There’s a person here?’

I stopped in place.

Was the thing in front of me really human?

It definitely looked human.

I deliberately bit my lip.

Pain spread through me.

At the very least, I now knew this wasn’t a dream.

Clinging to that small hope, I calmly examined her condition.

The faint trembling of her skin, her dilated pupils, her shoulders shaking from hyperventilation.

Based on my fragmented knowledge, she looked completely broken by fear.

Finding a person—or something that looked like a person—inside a company filled with monsters should have been comforting.

But she clearly wasn’t in any condition to share that feeling.

“First, calm down.”

Speaking in a low and steady tone is a basic rule for showing that you are not a threat.

I wasn’t even sure whether she had truly heard my voice, but the woman slowly turned her head toward me.

“A-a person? Are you really a person? You too… you weren’t sent by those monsters either, right?”

Her voice was already completely hoarse, and dried saliva clung around her lips.

I could roughly imagine the kind of suffering she had gone through to get here.

“Yes, I’m human. I came to the Human Resources Department to submit my resignation.”

The instant the word “resignation” left my mouth, tears burst from the woman’s eyes.

She grabbed onto my pants while breaking down into desperate sobs.

“Haa, aaah! I-I thought I was the only one. I-in the hallway… a monkey, a monkey wearing a suit… greeted me….”

She couldn’t continue speaking.

Every time she tried to breathe in, it seemed like something became lodged in her throat.

But that alone was enough for me to understand.

She had seen the same things I had.

‘Lee Jihyun.’

I saw the crooked name tag hanging from her chest.

We were in the same situation, but our conditions were completely different.

“For now, that’s a good sign. We both managed to make it this far. Maybe you and I can really quit.”

“A good sign? We can leave? Really? No…! I didn’t get here like you did! That monkey… took my contract and sent me here! It said I had already given my fingerprint! It forced my finger down!”

She frantically rubbed her index finger against her shirt.

The skin had already torn open and started bleeding, yet she seemed incapable of feeling pain.

I was afraid too.

My heart pounded violently and cold sweat ran down my back.

But the more I looked at her, the stronger the feeling became that something was terribly wrong.

“W-we need to call the police… and the Labor Department too… this is a violation of human rights. It’s kidnapping, assault… right? A-and they installed some weird security app on my phone so I can’t contact anyone anymore….”

Lee Jihyun muttered without even waiting for my response.

That was when it happened.

With an unpleasant sound like fingernails scraping across metal, the tightly shut door of the Human Resources Department slowly began to open.

“Next, Lee Jihyun.”

What came from inside sounded less like a human voice and more like metallic dissonance grinding against itself.

“A-ahh….”

Lee Jihyun no longer even had the strength to scream.

She only let out ragged breaths as she froze in place.

And soon after, like a puppet being dragged by invisible strings, she began stumbling toward the darkness.

Meanwhile, I was thinking about something else.

More precisely, about the lie I had told Manager Myeon.

— Besides, they installed some weird security app on my phone so I can’t contact anyone anymore….

It was Manager Myeon who installed that security app on my phone this morning as soon as I arrived at work.

Right now, my phone wasn’t receiving any calls.

— A family matter… I understand. What a shame. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen such a promising talent.

“Ah… ah….”

Manager Myeon had known from the very beginning that I was lying.

Then why did he let me go so easily?

Did he feel some kind of human compassion?

Or was he simply too lazy to bother with me?

Was he really going to feel sympathy or annoyance before anything else when a new employee he had personally interviewed said he wanted to quit on the very first day?

Before I could reach any reasonable conclusion amidst all that confusion, a voice came from inside the already open Human Resources office.

“Jeong Haeil, come in.”

I was slowly guided toward the door.

And the instant I opened it, the air stopped.

Human Resources was not an office.

The entire space was dyed in a deep crimson red.

The walls, ceiling, and floor were completely covered in blood, and the things I had mistaken for desks were masses of torn flesh with entrails hanging out of them.

And in the deepest center of the room sat a gigantic figure like a throne, so enormous it seemed to touch the ceiling.

It was a baby.

Or more precisely, a gigantic creature vaguely resembling a human baby, but twisted in a way impossible to describe.

Its skin was sticky like wet mucus, and instead of hair, thin tentacles tangled across its head.

It had four eyes.

One embedded in its forehead, and another inside its blood-covered open mouth.

Its nose was merely a split opening, and its breathing sounded heavy like the snoring of an adult.

It was smiling horrifically.

With the gums of an infant whose teeth had not yet grown in, it sucked on a bloodied finger while a mixture of blood and pus dripped from its mouth.

I couldn’t take a single step.

My legs stopped responding.

My throat burned.

It felt as though my body itself was shutting down all my senses in order to protect me.

But my eyes refused to close.

As if something wanted to force me to clearly engrave that monstrous scene into my mind.

“Jeong Haeil.”

That voice did not come from the monster.

It was definitely a human voice coming from somewhere inside the room.

But I couldn’t turn my head.

The gaze—
or perhaps simply the presence—
of that gigantic thing touching the ceiling crushed my body.

I swallowed and carefully asked,

“Where is… Lee Jihyun?”

The baby monster let out a huge belch.

Something bubbled inside its stomach before rising through its twisted throat.

Bleegh.

What the monster spat onto the floor along with a huge amount of saliva was an unrecognizable bloody mass.

Among the shredded red flesh, I could see the collar of a white shirt and a half-melted employee ID card with only a few letters remaining.

“She resigned.”

Those brief words crawled down the back of my neck transformed into a terror colder and deeper than Basement Level 3 itself.

Cold sweat burst across my back.

Even while my vision blurred, I had no choice but to understand.

“Ah… s-she resigned….”

The monster’s voice sounded sweet, like candy rolling around inside a familiar place.

A tone far too familiar.

As though it had repeated that word countless times with soft and pleasant satisfaction.

I understood instinctively.

This monster liked resignations.

It liked that word.

That act.

That result.

It was not receiving a resignation letter.

It was accepting a sacrifice while slowly raising the corners of its mouth.

Here, “resigning” meant leaving life itself behind.

I remained frozen in place, incapable of moving even a single step.

“So then, Jeong Haeil.”

When it called my name again, I slowly raised my eyes.

The sticky gums of the infant monster were now directly in front of me, forming a wet smile.

The eye embedded in its forehead and the eye inside its open mouth stared at me together with the other two.

It was not a simple gaze.

It was an evaluation.

The gaze of a carnivorous predator deciding whether a living creature could be chewed apart and swallowed.

“What brings you here?”

That voice, like rusted blades boiling against one another, horribly tore through my eardrums.

It was not the tone of a child.

It was the manner of speech of an adult.

A deeply unpleasant contradiction.

As though a fully developed mind were using the body of a baby.

Somewhere in the room echoed the sound of dripping liquid.

I couldn’t tell whether it came from the ceiling or whether the walls themselves were bleeding.

The creature slowly removed a finger from its mouth while sticky strands of saliva stretched between them, staring fixedly at me.

I placed one hand over my chest and slowly exhaled.

I clenched my teeth to stop my voice from trembling and carefully parted my lips.

“I….”