Chapter 169
The Bureau building Ian had visited after so long was the same as ever. Ian sat in the Bureau café and quietly stared out the window.
The city center in the morning. Office workers and students moved busily through the streets, and cars on their way to work crawled over the asphalt roads. The breath they exhaled turned to smoke, helping the trees breathe. Cherry blossoms in full bloom swayed in the wind, sending pink ripples through the air.
It was a perfectly ordinary spring morning. Ian sipped his coffee and quietly watched the scenery.
“You arrived faster than I expected.”
While he sat there, a familiar voice came from across the table.
It was Kim I-seo. Her long pink hair fluttering, she carefully pulled out a chair and sat down.
Though it was a sudden invitation to join him, the matter had already been settled, so Ian didn't stop her. Instead, he pulled the straw from his mouth and leaned back against the chair with a faint smile.
“It's been a while since I last saw your face. Haven't seen you since Monkey's Paw, have I?”
“For all practical purposes, yes. Personally, I'd like to get a little closer to you, Wizard, but I’m sure you have your own circumstances as well. So I kept my private contact to an absolute minimum.”
“There's no need to go that far. If anything, I'm basically a freelancer too.”
“I see. Understood. Then from now on, I'll try reaching out a little more personally.”
Ian couldn't help but let out a faint chuckle at Kim I-seo's smooth talk.
“Your way of speaking is a little softer today. Before, it seemed very stiff and formal.”
“Unlike the others, I judged that Shin Ian doesn't seem to prefer such stiff, groveling speech, so I changed my approach a little. If you'd like, I can adjust my manner of speaking back to how it was before.”
“No, that's fine. Just speak however you're comfortable.”
“Thank you for your consideration. However, speaking comfortably doesn't mean I'll be rude, so please rest assured on that point.”
“Yeah, yeah. I get it, so order something to drink or eat. The staff keeps staring at us.”
“Ah.”
At Ian's remark, Kim I-seo sprang to her feet and ordered a drink and a cake.
The order was ready in no time. She came back with an iced Americano and a slice of cheesecake, then sat back down.
“Please eat. I'm treating you.”
Ian took the fork Kim I-seo handed him and cut off a bite of the cake. Since it wasn't from a specialty cake shop, it wasn't anything amazing, but it was decent enough. Better than what most cafés sold.
Clack.
Kim I-seo set her own fork down on the plate and sipped her coffee while watching Ian.
“Pretty good for something made so quickly, isn't it?”
“……Quickly? I thought it was something they just handed out pre-made.”
“It's a cake made by microwaving a dedicated capsule. There's a Mystery that puts all kinds of food into capsules and hands them out, and we used that.”
“……It's safe, right?”
At Ian's dubious question, Kim I-seo let out a soft chuckle.
“It's already a proven Mystery, so don't worry. If it were dangerous, we wouldn't use it like this in the first place.”
“Well... that's true. Bureau employees do seem to eat it a lot...”
“Yes. Field staff don't spend much time in the building, so they don't come to the café often, but office workers practically use it like a second home. So far, we've never detected anything abnormal in their bodies.”
If that was the case, then there was nothing to be concerned about. Ian nodded and slowly ate the cake, savoring it.
By contrast, Kim I-seo hadn't even touched her cake. It was the complete opposite of her earlier assurance that it was safe.
However, when he asked why she wasn't eating, the answer she gave was purely personal.
“I ate too much cake when I was young. So I don't want any now.”
“Just a preference?”
“Yes. And... sweets tend to bring back bad memories for me. Have I ever told you that, when I was little, I was dragged into the cruel fairy tale of Hansel and Gretel?”
“No, that's the first I've heard of it.”
Hansel and Gretel.
A fairy tale from Germany, one of the classic stories featuring a house made of candy and a witch. It was still fairly famous today, so there were far more people who knew it than didn't.
But once a fairy tale passed through the hands of a Mystery, something was bound to go wrong somewhere. Hansel and Gretel was no exception.
Kim I-seo gave a bitter smile and briefly reminisced about her past.
“It's not much of a special story anyway, so I'll keep it brief. About ten years ago, my whole family was swept into a fairy-tale world. Everyone except me died there, and I was the only one who escaped.”
“……”
“The witch made snacks and candies to sell using my family as ingredients. Thankfully, I never had to eat any of them, but under the pretense of fattening me up, she fed me other sweets like crazy. I saw how they were made, so I knew the things I ate didn't use people as ingredients, but even so, eating sweets still doesn't make me feel very good.”
“……Sorry. I feel like I brought up something I shouldn't have.”
“It's fine. I was the one who said it, wasn't I?”
Kim I-seo gave a small laugh and looked back out the window. The spring scenery was reflected in her dull black eyes.
“The reason my hair is pink is because the witch poured dye over my head. Originally, even the whites of my eyes and my skin were pink, but thankfully the Bureau was able to remove that with a procedure. My hair, however, couldn't be fixed.”
“Hmm……”
“Well, I got annoyed once and shaved it all off. It grows back quickly anyway, so now I just live with it. Other than my hair color being unusual, there aren't really any disadvantages.”
“Did you join the Bureau to get revenge? To track down fairy tales and exterminate them?”
At Ian's sudden question, Kim I-seo's eyes shifted slightly. She fell silent for a moment as if thinking, then nodded with a blank expression.
“That's right. I joined the Bureau to permanently deal with every cruel fairy tale in the world.”
“Impossible. Cruel fairy tales are Mysteries with an original source, after all. They're different from ordinary anomalies.”
The difference between entities born from urban legends and those that aren't.
An anomaly with no original source, in other words, a pure monster, can be driven to extinction by various means. It wasn't impossible to wipe out every last one and make sure they no longer existed in the world.
By contrast, if there is or was something that served as the story's original source—like Hachishaku-sama or cruel fairy tales—and if it's still being talked about by people, then the anomalies derived from it can't be exterminated. All you can do is keep their numbers in check.
So the permanent extermination of cruel fairy tales that Kim I-seo wanted was completely impossible. Unfortunately, that was the reality.
“I know.”
Kim I-seo knew that as well.
“But I still have to try. At the very least, Hansel and Gretel.”
“……Well, it's not really my place to weigh in. Telling you how to go about a personal vendetta would be ridiculous. More importantly, let's get to the main point.”
Thunk.
Ian set down the cup he was holding and changed the subject. Kim I-seo immediately took out a tablet and chimed in.
“Museum of the Five Senses. So far, we've identified a total of five types of museums: the Sight Museum, the Hearing Museum, the Taste Museum, the Touch Museum, and the Smell Museum. Of these, Taste and Touch have already been exterminated.
“How were they dealt with?”
“Fortunately, those two museums could be physically destroyed. I think Taste had to permit the act of ‘chewing’ something with your teeth, and Touch had to permit the act of ‘touching’ something, so physical means could be used. But the other three...
“So that means it's impossible. I understand.”
To experience taste, you have to put food in your mouth and chew it. There are quite a few foods whose contents can only be properly tasted if you bite them open, so there were often cases where teeth were necessary.
So the act of crushing things with your teeth had to be permitted. Touch also required physical interference for similar reasons.
But what about sight? Hearing and smell?
None of them needed physical interference.
The eye just sees, the ear just hears, and the nose just smells. These three senses are nothing more than feeling through the organs themselves, without any other means, so they had little to do with physical destruction. So it wasn't strange that brute-force demolition was impossible.
There were quite a few casualties in the process of destroying the two museums, but we still managed to bring them down somehow. However, problems arose at the Sight Museum.
“……”
“There, the use of any sense other than sight isn't allowed. In simple terms, if you use anything other than the concept of ‘seeing’ when viewing the exhibits, you die on the spot.”
“……Huh.”
“Before I give you the exact explanation, take a look at this first.”
Swish.
Kim I-seo showed Ian the tablet screen.
A plain photograph.
It was a file, almost like someone's diary, with different contents written under each number.
“It's a document an agent dispatched to the scene found. They said it was in a safe zone.”
Kim I-seo said.
“According to the Bureau's assessment, it seems to be notes left by civilians who had been transferred into the museum.”
“……A note?”
“Yes. Look at the first sentence.”
He looked.
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1. Park Han-sol (This is my real name. If someone who reads this gets out, please remember me.)
I don't know what the hell is going on right now, but I'm leaving this here to somehow keep myself calm.
I usually hang around the Napolitan Gallery a lot, so I'm sure writing something like this will help the next person.
Fuck, I used to just laugh at this stuff, but now that it's real, I'm so fucking scared I feel like I'm going to die. Still, fuck it, sitting still won't change anything, so I'm going to try exploring.
This notebook I'm writing in is practically brand-new, but still, from the next person onward, don't write too much. It might just go to waste.
I'm using it as if it's mine, so I'm writing a lot.
Anyway, I waited here for three hours, and nothing special happened. I could hear someone walking around outside, but they didn't come in. More precisely, they did grab the doorknob, but they couldn't open it as if it were locked.
I can open it. Apparently it can be opened from the outside too. So I'm thinking this is some kind of safe zone.
(If not, sorry. But fuck, that's how I see it.)
When I went outside to test whether the door would open, some kind of art museum spread out before me, and the door I came through had the words ‘Break Room’ engraved on it. If you find this note somewhere else, consider the break room the safe zone.
And that's everything I figured out.
I'm planning to do a proper exploration from here on out. There isn't anything to eat in the break room, so if I don't want to starve, I figure I have to start wandering around.
I'm going to check out the entire first floor first. Then I'll write again.
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2. Choi Jia (that's my real name too.)
I found the notebook, so I'm going to write something too. First of all, there was no follow-up from the Park Han-sol above.
I guess he probably went out to explore and died. It must mean there's something outside so scary he couldn't even make it back here.
Sorry. I'll just starve to death. I sincerely hope the next person who comes here escapes.
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3. Lee Seong-hyeon (real name)
Choi Jia, you fucking bitch. Do something before you die. And what the hell am I supposed to do with a corpse just sitting in the break room? Eat it? Thanks a fucking lot, shit. Because of you I won't starve to death, you goddamn bastard.
Fuck!
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“……”
To Ian, these were the traces left by ordinary powerless people caught up in a Mystery he was seeing for the first time.
He brushed a finger across his lips.