Chapter 38
“Heh-heh-heh. If it isn’t now, when would we ever get a chance like this?”
“Right? At this level, some premium humor should make the novel blow up, right?”
I dreamed.
A dream in which a blue dokkaebi made some author write the next chapter’s title as a discontinuation notice, under the pretense of humor.
A dream that ended with a writer bewitched by something evil imagining a cheerful future and hitting Enter.
“Like that’d happen.”
“Seong-bin?”
When I opened my eyes, I saw a completely unfamiliar ceiling. In my slightly lowered line of sight was Team Leader Imina, carving up an apple.
My whole body felt weak, as if I’d been dunked in water, and my head was half foggy, but I could tell it wasn’t a dream.
“It feels like it’s been ages since I last saw you, Team Leader.”
Even though only two days had passed.
“Makes sense, right? You slept soundly for a whole week.”
“A week?”
The Team Leader came over carrying a plate with the mangled apple.
“That’s right. But don’t worry, okay? Hospitalization time doesn’t get deducted from your response rest period.”
“That’s some incredible welfare.”
On the plate the Team Leader held out were tiny apple pieces mixed with huge peels still clinging to plenty of flesh.
“I know this is a rude question, but don’t you normally use a knife to peel apples?”
“Wasteful, isn’t it? There’s more nutrition in the peel too.”
The laid-back, pointless chatter that followed made me smile on its own.
As the saying goes, even rolling in a dung patch is still this world. Except for the forest.
“By the way, what happened to the seniors and the civilians?”
Imina smiled her usual languid eye-smile and bit into an apple piece.
“The civilians all returned to their normal lives without any issues.”
“What about the people we couldn’t find?”
“According to the info team’s check, there were only three civilians caught up in the Forest of the Faceless Ones.”
Then where is Minseo’s mom?
“They say the child got caught up because they got distracted by a cat instead of following their mother. The seniors took them back safely, though?”
“Thank goodness.”
Following Imina’s glance to both sides at the word seniors, I looked beside me.
“…….”
On the left was Choi Yu-na, sleeping in a proper, textbook-straight posture as if she’d eaten a poisoned apple.
“Gororong... gororong....”
On the right was Kang Chae-young, curled up with the blanket already fallen to the floor, asleep.
“Are both of them okay?”
“Of course~. The worst off person here is Seong-bin, so don’t worry.”
“In that case, I was the first one to wake up, though.”
“It’s 4 a.m., that’s why. The two of them woke up three days ago.”
I thought it was evening because it was dark outside the window, but I never expected it to be dawn.
...Then Team Leader, you came here at 4 a.m. and were peeling apples?
“How was your stint at Eternal Life General Hospital?”
“Ah, that? Don’t even ask. The director kept begging me to give him Seong-bin, saying he’d close the hospital for ten years.”
What.
“He said that even with a degraded entity, he’d never seen a human survive five seconds against the Faceless Man, and that he wanted to take his time with clinical experiments and dissections.”
For some reason, entities are taking an interest in me!? Should I write a novel about that or something.
“Team Leader, you were the one who went in first, so how does the hospital even know about it...?”
“Well, because handling it takes quite a while? I only got back a few days ago~.”
“You’ve been through a lot.”
“What can I say? I got to see the youngest wake up, so I’m heading out now?”
Before I could say anything else, the Team Leader placed the apple plate on top of the dresser and left the hospital room.
“...At least turn off the light before you go.”
“Oops, forgot~.”
Click.
“Then get some good rest!”
Geez, that startled me. As soon as I muttered to myself, Imina suddenly reappeared, turned off the hospital room light, and disappeared again.
She didn’t hear that, right? She just came back because she remembered it, right?
Using the Seoul nightscape’s lights as my guide, I groped for the plate and bit into an apple.
At the same time, I grabbed the terminal beside the plate and opened the gallery.
Ah, my beloved UI.
Gwanbungie’s Mom Today~ [15]
I’m dying for some corruption porridge so bad lol [24]
Starting the 2,464,234th Newbie Funeral
Entities Are Open to Everyone [2]
Starting the 2,464,234th Newbie Funeral
Author: 설정딸개조하
I’LL GET STARTED !!!!!!!!
[Comments]
개체박이 : He was a good lump of dopamine
으아들이대 : Damn it, give me the Team Leader photo and go
사냥개 : Seriously, if he lasted a week, you’d have to say he met his end
화이트해커 : Now who am I supposed to get bank account numbers from
ㄴ지박령1호 : Don’t say the nasty bit that we never even gave one to begin with
[Entities Are Open to Everyone]
Author: 게이괴이게이야
An entity can be encountered once you cleanse your mind and body and face the abyss. The method is as follows. First, to cleanse the body, eat Bureau meals for 30 days...(more)
[Comments]
고아분쇄기 : You’re just telling us to join the Bureau, you crazy bitch
암술수술수술 : What’s so good about encountering it, you idiot
The usual gallery, with nothing added except my death-bait.
I was a little curious that the private posts I’d been seeing a lot lately weren’t visible, but whatever, they probably had things to say among themselves.
[I Set a World Record Against the Faceless Man, How’s That?]
Author: 갤질참쉽죠
That bitch broke the rules and hacked her way in, then came charging at Gear 3
But this body survived a full five seconds after getting caught—fuck, yes lol
With a father who was a scientist or whatever, no wonder he was a motherless bastard
He was acting like a total orphan bastard, but damn! I didn’t even have a father!
In the end, it was my superior orphan power that brought me back alive.
So now be ready to answer the questions you bastards were chewing over.
I can’t really do anything if you don’t, but anyway answer me and make sure to lay everything out.
[Comments]
아빠는무림인 : How do you manage to not post a normal survival report even once....
으아들이대 : Team Leader photo! Team Leader photo! Team Leader photo! Team Leader photo! Team Leader photo! Team Leader photo!
갇혔어요집에 : So a single-parent household can’t beat a no-parent household?
화이트해커 : If you’re alive, send me your bank account number, you crazy bastard
Wiiing-! Wiiing-! Wiiing-!
I missed this terminal’s endless vibration.
This trembling that wraps around my hand makes me feel alive in this rough life....
It’s not like I’m cultivating spiritual roots just so I can gallery-post, or saving an apocalypse world just so I can gallery-post, or being a dungeon master and still gallery-posting.
“Mmm....”
Oops.
Apparently the vibration of the phone annoyed Choi Yu-na, and she let out a groan.
In a hospital room, keeping it on silent is basic manners.
I hurriedly switched it to silent mode, and the furrow in her brow smoothed out as she drifted back to sleep with a peaceful expression.
“Gororong... gororong....”
The other side somehow looked like she’d still sleep soundly even if I blasted a NewTube video at full volume....
I looked back at the terminal.
So what are you curious about?
ㄴ(글쓴이) 갤질참쉽죠 : Everything. Scientist Madnificent, the 606 Treaty, the Seoul Management Bureau that’s worse than a crappy little company, entities that break the rules. What else was there? Anyway, bring it all! Bring everything!
ㄴ사냥개 : If you just explain the 606 Treaty, that’d probably explain more than half of it
ㄴ설정딸개조하 : I’ll cook up a summary post, hold on
ㄴ으아들이대 : Team Leader photo! Team Leader photo! Team Leader photo! Team Leader photo!
Ignoring the last comment, I watched NewTube videos and checked the news of the world.
The stock market still rising, a web novel platform challenge that had only just begun, fine dining for 15,000 won....
After seeing a few bizarre bits of news, as strange as the entities themselves, I eventually saw a summary post.
[Let’s Figure Out What the 606 Treaty Is]
Author: 설정딸개조하
If I write it out in detail, it’d have to be thesis-level, so I’ll just give the core summary
If there’s anything you don’t know, drop a comment or post and I’ll answer
The 606 Treaty is a treaty signed on June 6, ten years ago, on Memorial Day
It covers South Korea and every country in the world, Vatican included
Instead of dumping all entities of Class 1 and above into Korea
South Korea gets priority over everything except entity incursions
Anything requested by the Bureau and the government has to be handed over by the rest of the world no matter what
Resources, weapons, food, capital, technology, secrets... even people
As for phenomenon-type or location-type entities, they couldn’t be brought over, so I vaguely remember the Bureau existing in name only all over the world
But starting a year ago, it looks like they’ve been bringing in location- and phenomenon-types too?
Anyway, that’s why there’s a Bureau in every province.
My head throbbed.
At most, I’d expected them to bring over one or two dangerous entities.
‘This is mine? No, that one’s yours!’ or something like that.
I knew the higher-ups weren’t exactly deep thinkers, but what in the world were they thinking when they signed a treaty like that?
What was so good about it? It wasn’t even NIMBY—it was PIMBY.
Even if they handed over everything, if they were going to dump entities on us, South Korea should have been wiped out long ago, right?
If even two or three of the things I’d experienced acted up on a whim, wouldn’t an entity apocalypse be a certainty?
Dizzy, but there was still more content, so I turned my eyes back to the terminal.
What was it that made this possible again? Some scientist discovered it, but I can’t remember who.
In short, the total amount of power entities can exert within a given area is fixed.
Packing them into the narrow strip called the Korean Peninsula was
a loophole meant to suppress as much as possible the number of entities that slip out of management and run wild.
Korea was chosen for unavoidable reasons, but anyway, for that reason entities got dumped into Korea.
That’s basically how you should understand it.
[Why Korea, Out of All Those Countries?]
Author: 갤질참쉽죠
There are neighboring countries, countries above us, and the world police, so why the hell did they dump everything into Korea?
This is the company I’m supposed to work for life at? Don’t bullshit me, I’d rather kill myself.
No, fine, let’s generously assume there was a reason after all.
Seriously, why Korea? Out of all the countries in the world, why dump entity crap into a country that’s already Hell Joseon?
[Comments]
아빠는무림인 : [cat-eared girl shrugging meme]
ㄴ아빠는무림인 : So that’s how it was... huh... right, there was something like that... still don’t know what it is... that....
We’d laughed our asses off when we found out the reason too.
But once you know the reason, it does make sense.
It’s like asking which country wins archery gold.
ㄴ지박령1호 : You really poked the **Nuclear Mind**
설정딸개조하 : When our whole team got the result report, we thought the entire world had pulled off some kind of rigged election
화이트해커 : Does anyone have that meeting-minutes screenshot?
ㄴ암술수술수술 : I’ve got it
A little while later, after seeing the reason Korea was chosen that 암술수술수술 uploaded, I could only nod in agreement.
Why the Republic of Korea had been chosen.
Why those who heard it firsthand had no choice but to agree.
[The Reason Korea Became an Entity Field. EU]
Author: 암술수술수술
[Photo of 248 votes for South Korea and 1 vote for Japan]
+++
[Entity Quarantine Nation Voting Results]
Reasons for choosing the voted-for country
South Korea: (blank)
Common reason among the remaining 248 countries: After observing parallel worlds containing entities through the 'mirror world,' South Korea was the place where humanity had the lowest chance of extinction when placed at the center.
The examples of the observed parallel worlds mentioned in the reasons are as follows.
All organizations and individuals mentioned below are organizations and individuals from South Korea.
A world where a Bureau centered on an office worker with special eyes defeated ■■.
A world where a Bureau exists with a man who went from ordinary human to vampire angel, demonic fiend-god, saint, and ■■.
A world where South Korea, having become an apocalypse, fights strange creatures using magic.
A world where a secret company exists to contain abnormal entities, existing for a world without abnormalities.
A world where four exorcists stopped the end of the world.
A world where a black reaper brought peace to a world covered in Objects.
A world where a deputy brought an end to the age of gods and ushered in the age of humans.
Based on the voting results stated above, the Republic of Korea is hereby designated an 'Entity Quarantine Nation'.
The world’s independent sovereign states and autonomous regions unanimously agree to conclude Treaty No. 606 with the government of the Republic of Korea.
+++
As history proved, it was because far too many exceptionally talented people were coming out of such a cramped little country.