Chapter 48
[I declare here and now that I am not a complete orphan]
Author: GalleryingIsEasy
Since the venerable Yeondoo High School, steeped in history and tradition, said that my family still exists
Given that the possibility of family members still alive in this world has been observed
I shall call this Schrödinger's family.
When I open my eyes in the morning, I find myself more curious about this than I was the day before.
Which of Mom, Dad, and my siblings is still alive?
If it's a sibling, I'll treat them damn well; if it's Mom, I'll treat her damn well; but Dad gets the shit beaten out of him.
[Comments]
EntityFreak: Why beat up your dad?
ㄴ(OP) GalleryingIsEasy: That's the head of household's role. And even if I hit him, Dad's the only one who'd understand.
PistilSurgerySurgery: Anyway, I get that the day you meet your family is the day the gallery blows up.
SettingLoreModder: Schrödinger's orphan, holy shit lol.
MyDadIsAMurimMaster: Here, there's one family member you want inside this box. Take a look through the hole.
GalleryingForPay: Don't trust everything an entity says.
ㄴ(OP) GalleryingIsEasy: Obviously.
It took less than five minutes to take the exam and leave the school.
After descending only ten stairs, the floor changed as if the staircase were telling us to get lost, while the guard appeared on every floor and mercilessly beat its own thigh with a bat as though frustrated.
Once we stepped outside the building, the statue of King Sejong merely glowed with red eyes, while the students inside the building all raised their middle fingers at us from the windows.
I wanted to give them a double middle finger in response to their passionate welcome, but Team Leader pinched my cheek and said, “Don’t make enemies,” so I barely managed to hold back.
The moment we passed through the school gate, my field of vision turned white.
When my vision returned, I found myself about ten paces from the Management Bureau building.
In the Republic of Korea, one of the few things we can boast about is good public safety, and yet I never thought I'd suffer something like this.
Nothing much happened after that.
Kang Chaeyoung, whose eyes were swollen, and Choi Yuna, who had developed dark circles, greeted me enthusiastically; we also took a few pictures before handing the uniforms we'd worn over to the Management Bureau.
Imina’s external injuries healed completely in about ten minutes thanks to Cover Gel, and Counselor Cheon Jin-seong said my head was fine now, too.
“Even if you’re caught by the Faceless Man again, you shouldn’t experience the same symptoms.”
If anything, he said I’d developed immunity.
I wasn’t sure that was a good thing. At this rate, maybe I really would grow farther removed from humanity.
Anyway, that meant another vacation.
Explaining everything that happened before I started resting would be tedious and pretentious, so.
Since this vacation came without any side effects, there was no real reason to go to the office….
I spent five whole days lying down and gallerying all day.
What? Why?
[Come to think of it, it’s about time that guy got something, too.]
Author: HoundDog
Was it one Level 2, three Level 3s, and two Level 4s that he’d gotten involved with?
If he’s managed all that in sound health over two months, that’s practically an achievement on par with Team Leader’s.
Shouldn’t they give him some kind of useful entity-type tool?
[Comments]
MyDadIsAMurimMaster: He might need to take down one more Level 4 first.
WhiteHacker: I think someone said last time that he was going to receive something. Has he still not gotten it?
GayFreakGay: They said that if you rack up too many achievements in a short time, it takes a while because they have to hold a meeting to decide what to give you.
GalleryingForPay: At most, they’ll hand him something like a ‘1-Coin Coin’ or an ‘Escape-from-the-Cave Rope.’
ㄴSettingLoreModder: No, fuck, those are insanely good.
ㄴGalleryingForPay: There are tons of tools that can go toe-to-toe with entities, so aren’t those a little too weak?
If I get to choose, I’d like a tool for escape or defense…. I don’t know. It’s not like appealing for one will make it happen.
[Speaking of rewards, that reminds me of him.]
Author: AhShoveItIn
There was this guy who begged the Incheon Branch to let him manage a succubus just once because he thought he’d be a virgin for the rest of his life.
Did the branch agree because he was so damn good at his job?
And then he died.
He was supposed to disconnect once in a while during the management, but he lost his head and charged back in, getting sucked dry.
Since he died from a heart attack during sex, something he wanted, I guess it was still a good death?
[Comments]
EntityFreak: Is this about you?
ㄴAhShoveItIn: ㄴㄴ I’m married.
ㄴEntityFreak: Then why are you like this?
AutoSaveIsEssential: You saw what it looked like and still thought about charging in?
ㄴAhShoveItIn: What was it? They say it looks different in person.
ㄴAutoSaveIsEssential: Looking at your mental state, I can see why you were the ace.
GalleryingIsEasy: What the hell is a succubus? What’s a succubus?
ㄴAhShoveItIn: Open the attachment.
Aren’t succubi usually a good thing? The accepted academic consensus is that they’re insanely beautiful.
That’s what I used to think, too. Yes, I was one of them.
++++
[Entity Report]
Succubus
Grade: Level 1
Classification - Entity-type
[Photo]
The ‘Succubus’ is an entity discovered in 1999 at a brothel in Amsterdam’s red-light district in the Netherlands.
The establishment had become a famous destination rumored to offer service from impossibly beautiful employees that was enough to entrance its customers,
but reports came in that patrons were suffering symptoms such as erectile dysfunction, loss of motivation, and lethargy, prompting the local Management Bureau to investigate after deeming them an anomalous phenomenon.
The investigation found that not a single actual employee existed inside the establishment.
Instead, numerous masses of flesh and stalk-like tissues were discovered inside a building presumed to be a storage area, and the tissues had taken root throughout the building’s ceiling and walls.
Despite its alien appearance, people who see the ‘Succubus’ feel familiarity toward the entity rather than emotions such as terror or fear.
When a human approaches, the ‘Succubus’ transforms some of its fleshy tentacles into a shape resembling a hat.
If the subject puts it on their head, a neural connection forms between the entity and the subject.
Subjects connected to the ‘Succubus’ commonly experienced hallucinations of engaging in sexual contact with a person they considered ideal, or with multiple such people.
At the same time, intense pleasure was transmitted to the subject’s body, and most subjects were reported to be unable to distinguish the experience from reality.
However, approximately ten minutes after the connection ends, the subject loses all memory of having been connected to the entity.
The subject retains only a hazy memory of having experienced sexual activity, while memories of the ‘Succubus’s’ appearance and the process of contact are lost.
The establishment was confirmed to have used these characteristics of the ‘Succubus’ to provide services at a higher price than ordinary establishments.
The reason it could be used as a business tool despite causing memory loss is presumed to be that the owner never came into direct contact with the entity.
The investigation found that, contrary to the initial reports, no direct physical harm had occurred to customers who had been connected to the ‘Succubus.’
The cases of erectile dysfunction and loss of motivation were revealed to have been false information spread by employees of nearby establishments to undermine a competing business.
After securing the entity, the Management Bureau conducted numerous experiments using N-Rank personnel.
The ‘Succubus’ showed no notable reaction even after being left in a containment chamber for over a year, and showed neither voluntary contact nor hostile behavior in experiments involving other entities.
Accordingly, the Management Bureau classifies the entity as Level 1.
Experiments confirmed that the ‘Succubus’ caused no physical or mental harm when connected only once or when connections were spaced sufficiently far apart.
No addictive tendencies or abnormal changes in sexual preference were observed, either.
Rather, a phenomenon in which interest in sexual stimulation markedly decreased for a certain period after connection was repeatedly observed.
Field personnel unofficially refer to this as ‘post-nut clarity,’ but the use of this expression is not recommended in official reports.
However, attempting consecutive connections at short intervals causes neural overload, excessive bleeding, and cardiac abnormalities, and in severe cases may result in death from cardiac arrest.
To date, all deaths caused by the ‘Succubus’ have been limited to cases in which consecutive connections were attempted.
The following is the record of the only employee who attempted consecutive connections with the ‘Succubus.’
[Excerpt from containment chamber CCTV footage]
Employee K: Hwooooooaaahhhhhhh! Hwooooooongooooooh!
(The content is omitted because he only moaned for the following hour.)
Research Team Employee Choi Min-su: The experiment is over, Mr. K. Please move away from the entity and leave the containment chamber.
Employee K: …I risked my life for this reward, and it’s over after just one time?
Research Team Employee Choi Min-su: I was instructed to assign you management duties with a one-month interval. Come back next month.
Employee K: Ha….
(Employee K, who was about to leave the containment chamber, charges at the ‘Succubus’ again.)
Research Team Employee Choi Min-su: Mr. K?
Employee K: Uooooooooh!!!!! Ngh■it! ■■■■■■!!!!!!
(Thirty minutes later, the ‘Succubus’ severed its connection with K. Employee K was confirmed dead.)
++++
What could Employee K, who turned down entities useful for survival and received something like that as a reward, possibly have been thinking?
I thought maybe once would be okay, but the entity in the attached photo looked so revolting that I abandoned the idea.
A fleshy wired VR headset…. That’s probably the closest description.
If I didn’t like the reward the Management Bureau gave me, it seemed worth asking the gallery and my teammates about choosing a useful entity myself.
GalleryingIsEasy: How are entity photos attached to the reports?
ㄴ(OP) AhShoveItIn: They used to attach photos to reports, before an entity capable of implanting mental contamination in photos came to Korea.
ㄴGalleryingIsEasy: For real….
ㄴHoundDog: The Information Team really suffered back then. A truckload of people were hospitalized trying to confirm entities’ appearances.
“Rules are written in blood,” I guess.
Thinking that this wouldn’t be easy, I turned off my terminal and went to sleep.
I wanted to spend the rest of my life gallerying from my room like this….
***
The next morning, I was sitting in an interrogation waiting room after receiving an unexpected summons from the Information Team.
I still had another day of vacation left, so what was the rush?
[Interrogation Notice Regarding a Backrooms-Related Matter - Field Response Team Employee Park Seong-bin]
When I arrived in front of the interrogation room, a neatly dressed, salaryman-type man greeted me politely.
“Hello, Seong-bin. I’m Assistant Manager Kim Sang-jin from the Information Team.”
“I’m Park Seong-bin from the Field Response Team.”
“As stated in the notice, we summoned you regarding your first mission involving the Liminal Space.”
“What is this about?”
“As you know, Seong-bin, the Liminal Space is influenced by the medium that draws the most interest from the outside world. There’s been a problem with that.”
What kind of problem could there be? According to WhiteHacker, the Management Bureau paid huge sums to have the environment changed in whatever direction they wanted.
“The thing is, ownership of the channel you created has come into our possession. During that process, the person in charge said they absolutely wanted to meet you.”
“What kind of person is in charge?”
Kim Sang-jin sighed and looked at me.
“Not a person… It’s an entity on our team. ‘Electricity Flows Through the Brain.’”
These bastards.
“I refuse. I’d rather not get involved with an entity during my time off, either.”
“However, cooperation with the Information Team is given priority by the Management Bureau….”
“If you have an objection, I’d appreciate it if you would speak to our team leader.”
After we left the school, Imina had told me something while I was on leave.
‘I’ll cover everything that isn’t Field Response Team business, so do whatever you want, Seong-bin.’
An unlimited right to refuse matters involving other departments until the truth behind why I had left the Management Bureau building was uncovered.
It wasn’t a matter worth considering, since I had no desire to go looking for trouble.
“I expected you’d say that.”
Kim Sang-jin’s reaction was unexpectedly cool, as if he had anticipated this much.
If he knew I’d refuse, why had he gone to the trouble of summoning me?
While I was having that unpleasant thought, Kim Sang-jin held out a note.
“What’s this?”
“The person who arranged today’s meeting told me to give this to you if you refused. They said it would change your mind.”
A tiny note folded in half twice was placed in my hand.
Far too small to conceal anything serious.
“This is….”
After reading the note, the enormous shock delivered by its contents brought my thoughts to a temporary halt.
“Let me ask you again. Would you like to meet?”
“I think I’ll have to.”
“That’s a relief. If you refused this time, we had no other way. I don’t want to get on Team Leader Imina’s bad side….”
Kim Sang-jin left the preparation room for a moment, saying he needed to make preparations, his expression a little brighter.
After taking my eyes off the place where he had left, I looked at the note again.
The note, printed with lettering from a printer, contained a single short but forceful sentence.
[Agree if you’re not going to give me your bank-account number.]
A hint at the first offline meetup of the Management Bureau gallery.