How to Rewrite Ghost Stories - Chapter 10

WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Natty

◈ How to Rewrite Ghost Stories ◈

Episode 10: Mangnyang 2 Tunnel (5)

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Skreeeech!!

Hoooonk!!

The bus raced like a runaway train. Its sides scraped against the narrow tunnel walls, throwing sparks, while the warning alarm blared every time.

“AAAAH!”

A woman clinging to the handle in front of her seat screamed. There was no time to calmly buckle up. Every time the bus lurched, everyone was thrown into the air and sent tumbling, screaming.

All I could do was cling to the steering wheel with my whole body and wrench it tight as it spun wildly with the sound of grinding metal. The bus was nearly out of control.

“It’s catching up!!”

Crash!

The rearmost window shattered. Fragments blew into the bus. The roar tore at my ears. The shielding barrier disappeared, and the monster’s voice began drilling clearly into my head.

Comebackcomebackcomebackcomeback

Wewon’tletyougoThisisstillourlandBecomeonewithusandstayhere

Helpmedon’tgoaloneI’mlonelydon’tleavemecomebackcomebackcomebackcomebackcomebackcomebackcomebackcomebackcomeback

“W-we have to stop the bus. Those people still haven’t gotten on. We have to stop it...”

“Hold this person down! Don’t let them!!”

“Don’t listen to that thing!! Cover your ears, now!!”

The seats were complete chaos. Some people cried, while others tried to get outside. Beside me, Ju Jaegyeong barely managed to restrain someone trying to climb into the driver’s compartment.

Crack.

The side windows were starting to split too. If the windshield broke, we were finished. The mirror wouldn’t hold up either. I tried desperately to keep my eyes on the mirror mounted horizontally.

Ignoring the wide windshield and looking only at the mirror wasn’t easy, especially while the bus shook like crazy.

But I had to.

Just as the talisman reflected in the mirror had returned to its original form,

just as the black thing struck by strong light had revealed itself as a grotesque mass of flesh and obsession,

the tunnel in the mirror showed a completely different sight.

A tunnel carved from stone by human hands.

A tunnel with barely any lights, its signs packed with Chinese characters instead of Korean.

In the mirror, we were racing through the Mangnyang Tunnel from a hundred years ago. The bus, far too large for this narrow tunnel, ran on as its sides crumpled inward. Several windows burst apart under the impact.

The old Korean letters and Chinese characters covering the walls turned into sound. My eyes felt like they were about to burst. The tunnel gradually turned red. Had blood vessels burst?

No.

Bloodstains were spreading.

Countless handprints and bloodstains ran endlessly across the tunnel walls.

I want to go home.

My lungs hurt so much.

When can we get out?

I’m hungry.

Aren’t you taking us too?

‘N-no. My head...’

Beeeeep.

A high-pitched frequency suddenly filled my head until I went numb. Every other sound was swept away like white noise. Even in my dizzy state, I recognized that frequency.

ThreeAM PM’s radio was making as much noise as it possibly could.

This time, it didn’t seem like I was the only one hearing it. The people tangled together in the back, trying to hold one another back, started coming to their senses and calming down one by one.

‘We need to get out now.’

The bus jolted violently as it passed over a pile of rocks. At a curve, the side of the bus made a tearing sound. The tunnel was rapidly becoming narrower.

“Everyone, get flat on the floor!!”

Screeeech!

The roof of the bus ripped away almost as soon as I spoke. At the same time, the impact of shooting over a speed bump at full speed shook us all.

Arms from the mass of flesh caught up just above our heads.

Human bodies grew wildly from the fingertips clinging to the bus, grabbing at the rear seats.

‘Where is it? How far do we have to go? The tunnel should be almost over!’

I was gripping the steering wheel so hard that my palms felt ready to split open. Inside the small mirror, the scenery raced on endlessly. The stone grew rougher, the tunnel narrower.

‘A dead end?!’

Instead of light, the black mouth of a dead end opened before us.

No. That couldn’t be right. The Mangnyang Tunnel had opened, so there had to be an exit!

“Mr. Ju Jaegyeong! Please look at what you can see in the mirror!!”

Even if I couldn’t see it, someone suitable might. Ju Jaegyeong practically crawled into the compartment and leaned over.

“What do you see?!”

“Outside!! There’s a mirror! A mirror stuck in there strangely...!”

Found it.

The way out.

I stomped down on the accelerator as hard as I could. If we didn’t escape in one go, that thing might cling to us and follow us out of the tunnel.

“How is the mirror positioned?!”

“It’s stuck in the ceiling, facing the floor!”

“That’s it! We’re getting out of the tunnel now. Everyone, brace for impact!!”

The numbers on the dashboard passed 200 and began spinning wildly. The arms hanging onto the rear seats were torn away along with several rows of seats.

The dead end drew closer.

The short distance stretched out like slow motion.

700 meters.

300 meters.

50 meters.

10 meters.

Crash!!

A heavy blow struck the top of the bus. With a roar from above, the body tipped sharply, nearly overturning, before being thrown sideways.

The screech of friction. Something bursting. The bus skidding across the ground.

Thud!

The bus stopped.

More precisely, it had fallen onto its side.

‘That was... way too close.’

My hands were so stiff from gripping the wheel that they wouldn’t come off. It felt like every muscle in my body had come apart and stuck itself to the bus.

Dim evening light poured into the bus. It lay on its side with only the front portion, which could just fit diagonally through the tunnel exit, sticking out.

The windshield was cracked, and the dashboard and mirror were both shattered. Yet the roof and rear seats, which had definitely broken and torn away, were completely intact.

The people who had been thrown around slowly crawled to their feet.

Creeeeak.

The broken bus door opened with the sound of escaping air. Humid air flowed in, along with the distant chirping of insects.

“I think... we survived.”

We crawled out through the bus door. Since the bus was lying on its side with the entrance facing the ceiling, we had to help each other climb down.

Solid asphalt met my feet.

After staggering a few more steps, I pulled out my phone.

I had data service.

The others hesitantly took out their phones too. At first cautiously, then slowly, and finally faster and faster. Joyful, relieved smiles spread across their faces.

“I-I’m out!! I’m out!”

“We’re outside!!”

“We lived!!”

No one needed to start it. Everyone shouted in celebration and embraced one another.

I looked back at the tunnel.

Nothing could be heard inside anymore. In the tunnel, where every light had gone out, a single light flickered on.

The green signal blinked, blinked, blinked, then turned red.

The red light remained for a few seconds before disappearing.

The inside of the tunnel began to come into view.

The Mangnyang Tunnel had been completely stripped away.

‘...Can the people who disappeared in the ghost story never come back?’

My heart felt heavy as I remembered the students who had become nothing more than screaming faces within that mass of flesh.

I could have saved them.

I should have tried harder to stop them.

‘Still, I survived thanks to ThreeAM PM.’

Without that last burst of high-frequency support, I might have lost my mind before I could build up enough speed.

Depth Gauge Collection Status: 2 of ■■■ complete

001. Bloodwater Valley

002. Mangnyang Tunnel

A new reward has been unlocked!

At last, another slot on the Depth Gauge had been filled.

A new reward. What could it be?

Ghost stories took more out of me physically than I’d expected. Wasn’t there an item that could cover something like that? In novels and comics, this was usually when the protagonist got some overpowered item.

Unfortunately, I didn’t seem to be the protagonist of one of those stories.

No status window suddenly appeared. No gacha machine popped out of thin air. No cool weapon showed up.

Instead, when I opened the radio app, the annoying message that had been playing until now, 〈Service inspection in progress! See you shortly!〉, was replaced by a fanfare and a new announcement.

〈Congratulations! The radio has upgraded by one version!〉

I was the one who suffered, so why was the radio getting an upgrade?

When I tapped the radio app, a small explanation window popped up like an update tutorial.

〈The radio station is now on air. You can now listen during broadcast hours.〉

〈However, your friend is still adjusting the optimal frequency! Depending on the time and location, you may not be able to receive broadcasts, so please be careful.〉

〈The closer you get to the heart of a story, the better you may be able to tune into the radio frequency.〉

〈If you want to send a story to the radio, simply press the note button beside the radio. Not every submission will be broadcast, but your friend’s messages will always receive top priority.〉

A sticky-note icon appeared next to the dial used to tune the frequency. The frequency was set to 0300.

‘So until now, it had been talking to me through the Guestbook because it didn’t have enough functions?’

First it appeared as a chain letter, then as a malicious macro. It hadn’t spoken through normal conversation or language.

It had only been able to communicate on its own after using a spectrogram.

‘Maybe this thing gets stronger when I collect stories...’

It felt like raising an electronic pet in a bonsai game.

Once I thought of it that way, it seemed small and rather cute.

“So how are we getting home from here? Should we call a taxi?”

“Will insurance cover this?”

“How do we contact the bus company... No, should we even contact them?”

At the sound of their voices, I put my phone down for a moment and returned to the others. The bus lying on its side in the tunnel looked ready for the scrapyard.

Normally, the bus should never have been able to make it this far. The Seoul to Yeosan bus itself would probably have disappeared from the system. No one would’ve known who had been aboard.

The problem was that we had desperately found a way out.

The remains of the bus were still here. The passengers were still here. Even the bus schedule was still here.

“They’re not going to make us pay for it, right?”

I examined the bus driver’s license attached to the front of the bus. The name, face, and license number had all been erased.

For the person whose name I didn’t even know, I silently offered my condolences.

“Well... if the bus company doesn’t want a messy lawsuit, they’ll probably bury this quietly somehow.”

The bus company would handle it. It wasn’t like anyone would believe a ghost story.

“We called a taxi. Where are you going?”

“Oh, I’m going into Yeosan City. Aren’t the rest of you going to Yeosan too?”

“That was the plan, but I think I’m cancelling everything and going back to Seoul today. That student and I are heading north.”

The people gradually gathered with others going in the same direction and called taxis. I was the only one going to Yeosan City.

I understood.

They wanted to get home as soon as possible.

‘I want to go home too. If it weren’t for work, I would.’

At last, the taxis arrived. The others exchanged glances and quickly disappeared into them.

‘Hm? What is this?’

As I was about to get into a taxi, something heavy in my pocket caught my attention.

‘This is... a stone.’

What came out of my pocket was definitely the stone wrapped in a talisman that I had shoved deep into the driver’s compartment.

‘Hm. It looks a little different, though.’

When I raised it to eye level for a closer look, I noticed a strange difference from the one I’d repaired on the bus.

For one thing, there was no trace of it having been split. A white cord had been tied around it instead of a talisman. The same Chinese characters that had been written on the talisman were engraved on the stone.

‘...Could this be the reward?’

When I poked the stone, it felt strangely warm.

I probably shouldn’t throw it away. You can go into the collection box too.

I shoved the stone back into my pocket and got into the taxi.

“Please take me to Hana Galleria as quickly as possible.”

‘I don’t know if I can make it in time for the meeting. Should I ask to move it until after lunch?’

I’d also sweated so much on the bus that my clothes were a mess. I should stop at a sauna, wash up, and buy some clothes.

I pulled out my phone and began typing a message.

[There was an issue with the road on my way there, so I think I’ll be a little late. How about having lunch together? I’ll come down to meet you at the mall.]

Just as I was about to press send, my phone rang.

It was the pop-up MD.

What was this? I was just about to send a message.

“Yes, hello. This is Assistant Manager Seon Jaehyeon.”

The moment I answered, I heard sniffling.

It was a strange sound, like a child crying.

“...Hello?”

[...you’ll.]

Was the MD’s voice always this young?

I didn’t think so.

A bad feeling came over me.

“Who is this?”