WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Natty

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◈ How to Rewrite Ghost Stories ◈

Episode 16: Strange Tales Recording Corporation (1)

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“Haetae 3 here. Our objective is complete. Goblin Play will end within ten minutes. Have everything wrapped up in eight.”

The moment the short-haired section chief spoke into the radio, people poured out from all over the mall as if they had been waiting for the signal.

Their uniforms and face-concealing masks were identical, but their patches bore different patterns that identified their respective units.

They quickly spread out, collecting photographs and putting everything back in place. Flashes went off everywhere, and blue-glowing devices began to whir to life.

[Ansi 1 reporting. We’ll explain this as an internal inspection following a ventilation-system malfunction after closing.]

[We will record the twelve rescued victims as having left the pop-up early and received refunds.]

[All CCTV data from the mall has been collected.]

[It appears one of the victims continued moving inside. We will share the details after examining the scene.]

“What? Cheonrok came too?”

As the reports continued, the short-haired woman studied the unit patches and frowned before switching on her radio again.

“Cheonrok Division 2, why are you here? Ansi 1 was supposed to be enough for this.”

A snicker came through the radio.

The biggest pain in the ass had shown up. The short-haired woman clicked her tongue.

[Maybe Haetae is short-staffed because you’re always so uptight.]

“You’re probably the only one who works for fun. So why are you really here?”

[We heard the Distortion showed readings unlike anything we’ve seen before, so we came right away.]

“How was it different?”

[The Distortion maintained its original form, then suddenly underwent a drastic transformation. It was almost like the logical structure composing it was forcibly overridden.]

“That’s possible?”

[Aren’t you going to ask who did it?]

She did not need to ask.

The young man had moved unaffected by Goblin Play’s time distortion. At the exact time the dismantling operation began, he had been there, in that place. It would have been impossible without knowing the exit.

“They said he shut down the pop-up as soon as the Distortion occurred, claiming there’d been a sudden problem. Then he handled everything perfectly.”

He had evacuated the people and sent them to the basement and outside the third floor, where the Distortion could not reach. Then he had gone in alone and brought everyone to a safe point.

“Explain this override. Keep it as simple as possible.”

[He laid one ghost story over another. I guess you could say he inserted a different ghost story into parts not addressed by the Distortion’s rules and changed their priority.]

“That’s possible?”

[Maybe it would be if someone knew every version of every ghost story inside and out, but normally? No. Most victims panic when a few people get their arms and legs torn off.]

Even someone with strong nerves could not properly respond to the uncanny without prior advice.

Much less someone who would run around trying to save others in a place where surviving alone was already difficult. Unless they were a clergyperson or firefighter burning with a sense of duty.

But he had not merely kept himself alive. He had almost succeeded in twisting a ghost story, creating an exit, and getting out himself.

“What the hell does he do?”

Her eyes gleamed with both curiosity and wariness.

[Confirmation complete. The phenomenon has been erased. We will reopen the mall to the public in two hours.]

“Good. Everyone withdraw.”

The pop-up zone was cleaned so thoroughly that no one would know anything had happened there. As always.

Everyone withdrew quickly. The van carrying the short-haired woman swiftly left for its destination, with the unconscious Seon Jaehyeon inside.

❖ ❖ ❖

Ah. An unfamiliar ceiling.

It was a cliché, but nothing suited the situation better. The back of my head still felt numb.

‘Where am I now...?’

It was a strange room, like something I had only seen in dramas. One wall was entirely covered by a mirror, but it somehow seemed like more than a mirror. It looked like people outside could see into the room through it.

The room had one ceiling light, a plastic chair, the sofa I had been lying on, and a coffee table.

“Hello? Someone’s awake in here. Is anyone there?”

I timidly knocked on the mirror and the wall. The last people I had seen had been that suspicious group claiming to be civil servants...

“Oh, you woke up sooner than I expected.”

The door flew open, and the suspicious short-haired woman from earlier entered. As I stood awkwardly in the corner and watched her, she said,

“What are you doing? Sit.”

The short-haired woman pulled over the plastic chair and sat in front of the sofa. Since she did not seem hostile at all, I hesitantly sat on the sofa too.

“Do you smoke?”

Her tone was more relaxed than a boss suggesting an after-lunch cigarette during the company’s slow season. This person was not hostile toward me. Once I reached that conclusion, I relaxed.

“No, I don’t. Where is this? How did you know to come here? Wait, what about my pop-up?”

“One question at a time. Here, your phone. It was dead, so I charged it up.”

The short-haired woman tossed me my phone. I gave it a quick look, but nothing seemed out of place. They had not noticed the radio or my blog, had they?

“I didn’t look. Though I am interested in what’s on it.”

“...”

I had a very bad feeling about that. When I fell silent, the short-haired woman lit a cigarette and placed a two-liter bottle of water on the table.

“Drink.”

A two-liter bottle of water, all of a sudden? Still, I was thirsty. During that whole mess, the only thing I had drunk was a can of cola from inside that ghost story.

“Ah, thank you... Ghk? Bleurgh! Bleurgh! Hack!”

The moment the water went down my throat, a foul sour, bitter, and salty taste assaulted me all at once. The water I could not swallow sprayed from my nose and mouth. I could not stop coughing.

“Hurk...”

Black water dripped from my mouth. Drip. Drip. Black powder covered the water I had spat out. The short-haired woman clicked her tongue.

“As expected. Have another drink. No, all of it. Keep going. Until you stop spitting it out. Then we can properly talk.”

“Hack! What did you make me drink? What is this?”

“Jirisan maple sap. It’s good for you. Drink it. No, it would be better if I made you drink it.”

“Don’t lie. Maple sap doesn’t taste like th, mmph! Bleurgh! Hack!”

The short-haired woman gripped the plastic bottle, forced open my mouth, and poured the water in. It was a whole new kind of waterboarding.

Water ran over my entire face. Once it went up my nose and down the back of my throat, the disgusting taste and salty tang surged back up, spraying out with black powder.

“Stop. You don’t need to drink anymore.”

Only after more than half the bottle had been emptied did the short-haired woman stop. I looked awful. I was drenched in sweat from running around, and black soot-like powder covered my clothes and face.

I had thought keeping a straight face was one of my specialties, but this was impossible. As I covered my face and coughed, coughed, the short-haired woman held out a towel.

“You did well. Wipe your face with this.”

“What is this? What is all of this...?”

“Mok Inha.”

“What?”

“My name. You’re Seon Jaehyeon. From Seoul. Graduated from a four-year university. Completed military service without incident. Currently employed by a company based in Seoul. Nothing unusual. No chronic illnesses. No Distortions in your family. No record of requesting rescue from a Distortion. Your recent known locations were Odaesan Bloodwater Valley, Yeosan Tunnel, and The Mirror of the Otherworld pop-up.”

Hearing my personal information spill so freely from a stranger’s mouth sent a chill down my spine. I shot to my feet and backed far away from the short-haired woman.

Still seated, Mok Inha looked at me and placed a business card on the table.

“Sit. We have a lot to discuss.”

The card had the clean, bleak format that practically screamed government agency, but the words written on it were all combinations I had never seen before.

Ghost Story Records Corporation, Haetae 3

Section Chief Mok Inha

National Disaster and Distortion Reports: 197-171-1102

This looked like a scam. Maybe my thoughts showed on my face, because Mok Inha spoke first.

“I’m a civil servant.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Have you been scammed your whole life? Look up government departments if you don’t believe me. We’re kept out of public records like the National Intelligence Service, but the name receiving the budget is the National Records Management Office.”

“What do you record? And what is a Distortion?”

“Ghosts, demons, ghost stories, cursed objects. Things like that.”

The South Korean government officially recognized and even managed ghost stories in the twenty-first century? With civil servants? What kind of record-obsessed cyber-dystopian country was this?

No, the idea of ghost stories being managed as official resources made no sense in the first place. My face twisted even further. It had probably never looked so miserable, not even after hearing my military assignment.

“The government manages ghost stories?”

“The official term is Distortion.”

Mok Inha handed me a stack of papers. The printouts on the backs of old sheets contained a simple diagram explaining Distortions and their classification system.

Distortion

Cause unknown. Cannot be measured by ordinary means. Once entered, it is generally impossible to escape through one’s own efforts.

Distortions are not limited by location or person. They may occur anywhere within the bounds of what humans can perceive or imagine.

This department broadly defines the phenomena of Distortion. For purposes of terminology in the agreements and provisions below, the Distortion index is classified as follows.

◆ Urban Legend (U) / Horror Story (H) / Folk Tale (F)

◆ Subcategories: Being, Phenomenon, Place, Ghost, Thing...

“We investigate, record, rescue victims from, and ultimately close these Distortions.”

“Close?”

“Make it impossible for people to enter anymore. You went to Odaesan before, didn’t you? Don’t bother denying it.”

Mok Inha tossed several photographs onto the table. Bloodwater Valley, Odaesan, and me getting on a bus. I remembered the noisy filming crew in the village on the day I came down from Bloodwater Valley. Could those people have been them?

“Did you go there knowing it was a ghost story?”

“It’s a famous ghost story... I just wanted to see whether it was a real one. Nothing happened.”

“Don’t lie. Cheat in front of a pro, and you’ll lose your hand.”

“Even if it were true, is it a problem that I went there? Did I cause trouble with your management or something?”

Mok Inha narrowed her eyes. Well, there probably was a problem. If I thought of them as something like a mountain management authority, perhaps I was an illegal hiker.

But how was I supposed to know there was an agency managing ghost stories? Nothing had gone wrong before.

“You said you went because you wondered whether the ghost story was real. Had you done things like that before?”

“...A little?”

Mok Inha clearly did not believe me. I had not expected her to, so that was fine.

“Did you ever actually manage it?”

“No. Not once.”

“That is what we call closure. More specifically, we erase the coordinates that allow entry through the usual versions of a ghost story found online. Once a ghost story is closed, it cannot be entered again through the same method.”

“B-but what about posts saying, ‘I tried it and it worked’? Aren’t there reviews of ghost stories you can enter even after they have been closed?”

“Of course, ghost stories keep finding new methods and gaining new details. If someone says it works, that version continues. Someone says A did not work, but B did.

Do people believe them? Then the ghost story becomes enterable again through that method. So you can think of us as an organization that closes version after version until they eventually converge into countless impossibilities.”

Theoretically, that was not so different from the premise behind how I rewrote ghost stories. I guessed that the process of calling up ghost stories I knew, checking related searches, and personally considering details absent from those stories became a new route of entry.

“Then are all those things based on shamanism and whatever fake?”

“That’s an exception. Because that is real magic. But if a ghost story was born in its essential form as a terrifying story somebody truly experienced, albeit with no evidence, we’re the department that handles it.”

“But I never particularly tried to enter one of these Distortions...”

“Right. That’s what we wanted to know about you. Bloodwater Valley was closed a long time ago. How did you get in?”

That was the part I had trouble explaining. An online chain letter came to me, and when I ignored it, it sent a ghost after me. So I went there, and the valley had become a ghost-story spot?

I held back.

“I just like ghost stories. I found it online.”

“You saw material from over ten years ago and suddenly wanted to go?”

“What’s wrong with that? It was like taking a solo overnight camping trip.”

“So what happened when you went?”

I left out ThreeAM PM and the blog full of my ghost-story-obsessed life, then calmly gave a plausible account of what had happened.

Mok Inha listened with her arms crossed, occasionally asking questions. When I reached the part about how I had escaped, she even let out a brief, “Wow.”

Then, one story leading to another, I told her all about Mangnyang Tunnel and this pop-up ghost story too.

I think I talked for another thirty minutes. Even after I finished, Mok Inha stayed silent for a while with her eyes closed. Then she said something I had never expected.

“Want to change jobs?”

“What?”

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