WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Natty

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◈ How to Rewrite Ghost Stories ◈

Episode 12: Hana Galleria Mall Pop-Up (2)

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[We’ve entered. Please turn on the lights.]

Crackle. The radio spat out static. The lights did not come on.

[Lighting crew?]

The floor, which should have been level, seemed to tilt slightly to the left. My sense of balance twisted, bringing on a faint wave of nausea.

I instinctively reached into my pocket and gripped the Offering Stone tightly. Wrapped in talismans, it gave off a warmth like body heat.

‘I haven’t entered the ghost story yet.’

I reflexively checked my phone’s data connection. It was still working. But something felt wrong. This was supposed to be a short waiting area before visitors received instructions and moved to the next stage. It was less than ten meters long.

After the wait, I should have pulled back the curtain and entered the mirror maze. Instead, I had been walking for quite a while. Every time I looked up, the warning notice on one wall was still there.

‘Maybe I should go back and try entering from the exit...’

“...Huh!”

The moment I turned around, I staggered back. I nearly fell over.

A staff member was staring straight at me.

“...Ayeong? What are you doing here?”

There was no answer. Their face looked pale in the flashlight beam.

“Ayeong...?”

The flashlight shook, lighting different parts of the staff member. White, lumpy hands. Flat, shapeless pants that fell straight down. When the wind from the fan we had set up for the special effects blew, their shirt fluttered.

There was no abdomen underneath it.

“...!”

Something was wrong. I staggered back, and when the flashlight swept up and down on its own...

“Argh!”

In an instant, the staff member vanished, then suddenly appeared right in front of me.

Its face was empty. Its eyes had neither focus nor pupils. Blank white sclera stared at me!

I remembered someone saying, “Ah, that part where you turn through the mirror maze. The one with the sound of water and mannequin ghosts standing around. It really made you not want to go in, you know?”

Fox, fox, what are you doing?

The sound of water began to overlap with the Fox song. The pale mannequin staff member lunged at me.

“Damn it...!”

I shoved the staff member with all my strength. It felt like pushing a pile of clothes wrapped around something hard. The staff member fell to the floor with a loud crash. Its hands and head came loose and scattered in every direction.

Creak. Crrreak.

The mannequin flailed and began moving its body. I couldn’t waste any more time. I turned and ran.

There was a door for people who wanted to quit midway. I only had to find it. The pop-up maze stretched on forever. Like a ghost playing tricks, the Fox song kept whispering in my ears.

‘The mirror maze. I need to get out. I have to find a mirror!’

The ghost story of The Mirror of the Otherworld was definitely overwriting reality. At the same time, every nerve in my body came alert. After only three experiences, I had learned what it felt like to enter a ghost story.

What side dish? Frog side dish!

Are you dead? Are you alive?

There was no time.

‘If there isn’t a mirror, I’ll have to make one!’

I reached for the tumbler hanging at my side. I dumped water onto the floor and turned on my phone flashlight. Light flashed off the water, and for one instant, I saw my reflection.

There!

I jumped straight into the water. It wasn’t even enough to form a puddle, but it made a splash.

My feet hit the ground.

“...Damn.”

Before me was not the pop-up experience zone I had created, nor the mirror maze, but the endless darkness of a vast shopping mall.

The mall before me was a grotesquely distorted Galleria Mall. Some ceilings were too high to reach, while staircases elsewhere were upside down. The stores looked as though they had been copy-pasted above and below each other.

‘It’s almost exactly like the description of the world in The Mirror of the Otherworld.’

The surroundings were disturbingly quiet. In the distance, only the hollow sound of an escalator turning with the mechanical creak of rusty gears echoed through the mall.

My phone had lost network service.

It was definitely a ghost story. Now I had to find the missing people. I swept my flashlight around and began searching between the mall stores.

“Is anyone there?”

What if this ghost story had sent every person who entered to a different mall? That would be the worst-case scenario. Please let everyone who entered the ghost story be in the same place.

“I’m staff. If anyone’s there, please wave a flashlight.”

Hearing my voice echo through the empty, dark space was unsettling. It wasn’t even cold, but goosebumps rose along my arms and legs.

I searched from the third floor to the first twice more, but there was no sign of anyone. I wasn’t even sure whether I had searched the right floors. One area looked like the first floor, but when I went another way, it became the third floor. There was no way to walk in a straight line.

‘Wait. I don’t think that was there before.’

The third time I passed the escalator, I noticed something new. It was a metal signboard like the ones set up during repairs.

[Notice: If you encounter an employee wearing a blue name tag on this floor, never speak to them. Our department store does not have employees who wear blue name tags.]

‘Huh. It’s a Napolitan story?’

This was a fairly modern kind of ghost story. If anything, I felt relieved. Napolitan ghost stories, especially rules horror, had the advantage of being easier to escape.

As long as you didn’t get one of those contrived sets of rules that simply told you to die, or claimed that nothing you did would matter anyway, they had evolved to explain in detail how to survive.

If a rule had been presented like this, it meant the phenomenon or monster the ghost story referred to would appear nearby. I lowered my flashlight beam as much as possible and examined my surroundings.

‘There.’

At the end of the corridor, someone was slowly walking toward me with a blue name tag pinned to their chest.

A pale person... no, a mannequin.

It had no face, and its hands and feet were crude. Its limbs swung widely from side to side as though it had no joints at all.

I quickly hid behind a display in a nearby shop, slipped the flashlight inside my jacket to conceal the light completely, and held my breath.

Swish. Swish. Swish.

The jointless mannequin drew closer. It lingered nearby for a long time, waving its limbs around, then finally moved away with the sound of strangely bent footsteps.

‘If the rule says not to speak to it, that must mean it can hear sounds. I need to find people without making much noise.’

If there were entities that reacted to sound, there might be entities that recognized light too. I also needed to consider what kinds of name tags the things treated as employees in this department store might wear.

As I rapidly sorted through hypotheses in my head, the speakers above me crackled and an announcement began.

[Ding-dong. Attention. We are looking for the parents of a child lost in the children’s clothing store on the third floor. The child has three eyes and a mouth that reaches to its ears...]

I couldn’t listen. I covered my ears. The announcement repeated twice more, then cut off with crackling static.

‘The problem is figuring out which Napolitan ghost story this is...’

Why did every ghost story make me mount an investigation from scratch whenever I entered one?

“If the Depth Gauge is getting an update, how about one that tells me what ghost story I’ve entered?”

I muttered softly and opened the blog on my phone. There were hundreds of posts in the Napolitan ghost story category alone, and thousands of department store ghost stories. It would take too long to find the right one using only a name tag and a mannequin.

‘The range is too wide.’

“Do I have any choice but to keep looking around if I want to identify the rule story?”

I couldn’t stay hidden forever. I stood and began searching between the stores more carefully.

Every time my flashlight shone somewhere new, the scenery became a glamorous shopping mall, burned ruins, a run-down 1980s highway convenience store, or the ordinary darkness after closing time.

‘It would be nice if I could find something.’

My flashlight swept over the clothing department. It wasn’t the children’s clothing store, so it shouldn’t have anything to do with that announcement.

‘Huh?’

Something felt wrong.

A gaze and a chill at my back.

Mannequins didn’t have faces. At most, their hairstyles were roughly shaped. Depending on the outfit, some didn’t even have arms, legs, or upper bodies.

So they couldn’t see me, could they?

They couldn’t have dynamic poses, could they?

Weren’t they supposed to wear the clothes the store wanted to sell most?

Cold sweat ran down my back.

I wanted to run.

But I had to face them.

Slowly, I turned and shone my flashlight on the mannequins.

They stood in all kinds of poses, wearing all kinds of clothes, looking this way.

They were looking this way.

They were reaching their arms this way.

They wanted to run this way.

Information flooded my brain in an instant. I understood their forms. A red hoodie, a black cosplay outfit, a canvas tote with a character badge, tall or short, heavyset or skinny, with heads or glasses, crying or smiling, mouths open, eyes wide, tickets in hand, runningthisway

“...Gasp!”

Understanding came in an instant. Before I could even consciously recognize it, I turned and ran.

Whenever the flashlight beam shook wildly, the mannequins staggered into motion. Their gazes gathered on me.

I knew this ghost story.

I knew it.

I knew this ghost story!

‘The mannequin story from the Highway Pebbles Mart Rules for Use...!’

[Rule 13. Never shine a light directly on a mannequin. Mannequins dislike light. If you accidentally shine a light on one during patrol, immediately stand in the center of the corridor, apologize for your rudeness, and leave the area. Do not enter the area, or the two areas to either side of it, for a total of three areas, until after 3:33 a.m. You may patrol those areas again after that time.

However, if you shine a light on one twice or more, leave the area as soon as you recognize it and go to the safe zone assigned to you. Until after 4:47 a.m., you must not respond to any sound.

Confirmed response sounds: a request for a shift change, a customer, a doorbell, a drive-through call alert, opening time, an alarm clock, the notification sound required by Rule 7, a coworker calling you, and unconfirmed ■■, ■■■, ■■ ■■■ from family.]

It was a ghost story set in a huge mart built along a highway in the vast United States.

A ghost story that had grown enormous by covering every supernatural phenomenon inside and outside the store through a rule manual for night-shift workers.

[All employees must check the work schedule ten minutes before their shift begins and receive their assigned safe zone.]

I had to find a safe zone. Every time I looked away from the mannequins and looked back, they twisted strangely and drew closer. It was the same phenomenon as the staff mannequin earlier.

‘That damned radio! If it ever connects, I’m going to curse it out for ages!’

I ran while cursing Three A.M. up and down in my mind. Even so, my gaze kept darting between the path ahead and the phone clutched in my hand.

‘There was one. Remember. Remember.’

My fingers scrolled frantically. It had definitely been in a later emergency manual addition. Where was it?

‘Found it.’

I sprinted down the mall corridor. A clack sounded behind me.

[Turn left three times, then turn right at the first fork. If the door has STAFF ONLY written on it in black letters, it is safe.]

Three left turns.

The mall became the second floor, then the floor sign suddenly read fourth floor, and the next floor changed into zones numbered from ABC onward. The wide corridor instantly filled with display tables, pressing in from all sides.

Right.

Please, let it appear on the first try. The records attached to this ghost story included someone making this insane run as many as forty-three times.

Did they get out then? No. They ran out of stamina and died on the forty-third attempt.

And I probably couldn’t make it through twenty, much less forty.

‘Please, please!’

I kicked off the ground and turned sharply.

A door appeared.

I gripped the flashlight and shone it at the door. There was a sign on it.

STAFF ONLY

The letters were black.

I almost crashed into the door as I ran inside.

Footnotes:

Napolitan ghost stories are a Korean internet-horror format built around unexplained rules that must be followed.

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