WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Natty

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◈ How to Rewrite Ghost Stories ◈

Episode 17: Ghost Story Records Corporation (2)

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“You’re exactly the kind of talent we need here. Let this incident serve as your job interview. You can take a tour, then start right away.”

I erased every assessment I had made of Mok Inha and rewrote them from scratch. This person must have gone mad from being steeped in ghost stories too.

“I, I already have a job?”

“They say being a slave at a public corporation is better than working for a private company.”

“Do you really think a government agency that can’t even reveal its name is any good?!”

“The pay is good, and it could be a job for life. Just pretend you work for the National Intelligence Service.”

It sounded like Mok Inha was saying I would not be able to retire even after I died.

The job offer continued until my head spun. I could not tell whether the person in front of me was a civil servant or part of some shady pyramid scheme.

“D, don’t civil servants get hired through the civil service exam?”

“We only scout through special recruitment. It would be a disaster if we hired through the regular exam. The hazard pay is too high.”

Ah, so I really would die. This was dangerous fieldwork with ruined work-life balance!

I desperately shook my head.

“Why not? You have talent. Come here instead of staying at some private company, and you’ll blossom.”

Mok Inha gripped my wrist as if they meant to break it. Pick one. Are you trying to assault me or recruit me?

A crackling sigh came from the speaker connected through the window.

[Section Chief. If you put it that way, even people who were going to come will run away.]

Yes, exactly. I did not know who that was, but thank you for taking my side! Please stop this person!

[You should start by promoting the employee benefits. I told you that raises the hiring success rate.]

I take it back. They were no help.

Still, I had no intention of suddenly becoming a civil servant.

My current job was perfectly fine. Once the busy season passed, I had an easy workload for a third of the year, and the salary was not bad either.

I had accumulated enough seniority to get nearly twenty days of paid leave. If this pop-up went well, I was even close to becoming a section chief.

More than anything, this was not just any civil service job. It was a hazardous field position with danger pay.

I would have to work as a civil servant thrown into ghost stories packed with every kind of bizarre scenario in live 4DX.

My personal principle had always been that you should not turn what you love into a job.

“We aren’t saying this for nothing. A normal person like you would die after getting caught up in even one ghost story. You may have survived until now through sheer luck, but if you keep this up, you’ll be contaminated by misfortune. Like earlier.”

Mok Inha pointed to the black dust staining my clothes. My gaze followed it to the now-empty plastic bottle rolling around nearby.

“Come to think of it, that water was not maple sap... was it? What was it?”

“Consecrated purified water. Maple sap that the Mountain Lord performed rites over.”

The Mountain Lord? Like the tiger of Baekdu Mountain?

Come to think of it, Mok Inha had mentioned Goblin Play when we met at the pop-up.

Did they use supernatural things? Then did they do things like this too? I carefully watched Mok Inha’s reaction before asking,

“Do you use ghost stories as energy or extract weapons from ghost stories... things like that?”

The question I had been holding back slipped out.

I regretted it immediately. Mok Inha was looking at me with contempt.

“Does this look like some game or Ghost Story World to you?”

“Sorry.”

There were plenty of games and novels where companies ran on extracted alien energy. That was why I asked.

“Distortions are uncanny precisely because they operate beyond human understanding. It would be better if we could clear them like a game or get limitless energy out of them. At least our electricity bills would be lower.”

After that, Mok Inha muttered more frightening things about progressive electricity rates.

“Still, it is true that we receive various supplementary measures through shamanistic and religious means. If you do not change jobs and come here, you will receive a measure similar to Goblin Play before you leave. You’re changing jobs, right?”

“Well...”

Of course, it was tempting. Accessing countless stories through such an old organization would surely be a shortcut to getting closer to the ghost story I had been seeking.

But a hobby was a hobby, and work was work.

More than anything, I could not work there without explaining Hertz.

Hertz and the ThreeAM PM radio were both my secret weapon for breaking ghost stories and supernatural phenomena themselves. If I worked for the Corporation, they would naturally classify them as Distortions, which would cause problems.

“...I am close to a promotion, after all. I should build some kind of career before I leave. Thank you for the offer, but I will have to decline this time.”

When I politely refused, Mok Inha raised an eyebrow. Seeing how crazily Mok Inha had tried to pull me in earlier, I expected Mok Inha to explode again.

“Then it can’t be helped.”

Instead, she nodded easily.

“Then we’re done here. I’ll tidy up your awareness before you leave. You’ll forget anyway, but is there anything you want to ask? I’m only telling you because you’re an interesting one.”

Oh. I had plenty of questions.

“Both at the department store and now, what exactly is Goblin Play?”

“Have you ever heard that if you lose something, you can pray to a goblin to find it?”

“Ah, yes. It is a fairly famous superstition. You hang an item for the goblin and pray, and it finds what you lost. ...Are goblins actually real?”

“Of course. This world has spiritual beings, ghosts, and divine beasts. And if there are intelligent entities that are not warped supernatural phenomena, meaning not Distortions, we borrow their power too. Mountain spirits, Mountain Lords, goblins, and many others.”

Mok Inha explained the fairly difficult subject concisely.

They had taken countless steps to keep people from believing, then established a system to cooperate with spiritual beings that had lost the mystery and faith people had placed in them in that process. Through that system, they sometimes borrowed various powers.

I more or less understood. Could Hertz count as a spiritual being too? If so, I could at least try claiming Hertz was my goblin.

“I have a question for you too.”

“?”

“How did you know the place underground was an exit?”

“Around the time the pop-up began, I went down to the basement to put some things there. A door that had not been there before appeared, so I thought that had to be the space.”

“So you are someone who can see coordinates.”

“Coordinates... see them?”

When I asked, Mok Inha turned on the huge monitor mounted on the wall. Complex formulas filled the screen alongside a dizzying array of coordinates, including latitude, longitude, and constellations.

“Every place where a Distortion occurs deviates from the laws of reality. You cannot calculate it or enter it. Unless you happen to be exactly where it manifests and get swept up in it through bad luck.”

“So that is what a stranded person is.”

“Right. When we enter a specific Distortion, we forcibly fix coordinates that humans can enter. Like lowering an anchor, we drive it into the ground and pull it into the range of human perception. But sometimes there are people who can see those coordinates. Like you.”

Mok Inha seemed genuinely disappointed. Mok Inha even shoved two business cards into my pocket and told me to come if I ever changed my mind.

One was Mok Inha’s. The other read Ryu Hyeon-u. It was probably the large civil servant who had been with Mok Inha.

“I’m going to forget anyway, but may I ask one more thing?”

“? Go ahead.”

“It says Haetae 3. There must be other departments too, right? What does Haetae do?”

“The Haetae department handles search, rescue, and Closure. We enter the scene when a Distortion and stranded people appear, then resolve the situation.”

“Like the police?”

“Closer to firefighters. Distortions do not care about the date or time when they eat people. There are three other departments besides us. If you decide to change jobs, you will probably come to Haetae. You like fieldwork, right?”

No. If I had to choose, I would rather investigate ghost stories.

It was fortunate Mok Inha could not read minds. I only answered internally and followed her.

We took the lift down. With every floor we descended, the scent in the air and the sensation of the place changed.

Eventually, the lift stopped on a floor where the word Ansi was written large like a signboard. Instead of the stale smell of paper, the hallway was filled with the scent of an old temple after rain.

“Go inside. Just do as you are told.”

The room Mok Inha pointed to was large and contained only a huge altar. A faint scent of incense lingered in the air, while dozens of mirrors, large and small, covered the walls and ceiling.

An employee in white robes waited in the middle of the room, their face covered by a hood.

“This way. Please sit here.”

The employee in white pointed to a cushion in the middle of the room.

“Um, what exactly will be done to me?”

“Cognition erasure. Your memories from the moment the Distortion occurred until now will be erased and replaced with similar, ordinary memories.”

“Ah... Is it safe? There are no side effects, right?”

“Most people simply think they had a dream about a strange phenomenon. Even if they remember, it will only be like an afterimage or something from a dream. It is better if you can sleep as deeply as possible. The deeper your sleep, the better the effect.”

The employee placed a bronze mirror before me, large enough to reflect my upper body. Unlike the mirrors I had only seen as artifacts, a real bronze mirror reflected a person surprisingly clearly.

“Now, do not take your eyes off the mirror. We will begin shortly.”

Soon, the sound of a bronze chime began, followed by a low voice chanting something like a sutra.

The mirror shimmered. Shimmered.

The me in the mirror looked at the mirror, and I looked at the me in the mirror. My vision began to sway little by little.

Back at the Five Lakes, Fan Li was nowhere to be found.

Gulls from the white sandbar flew to the red smartweed bank.

When flocks of geese from the Three Lakes flew into Furong Hall,

we reached the Xunyang River, but the Exiled Immortal was nowhere to be found.

A hazy feeling slowly rose from below my waist and climbed up my spine.

The department store mannequins that had filled my mind, the radio, Mok Inha’s rough way of speaking, and Section Chief Seon-u’s eerie smile began to blur one by one.

I just hope my memories of Hertz do not disappear too...

I tightly gripped my phone once.

Then darkness fell.

❖ ❖ ❖

“Sir, sir! We have arrived. Wake up.”

I opened my eyes at the hand shaking my shoulder. A familiar officetel building stood outside the window. I was sitting in the back seat of a taxi.

“Uh... Ah, yes. Thank you. What about the fare?”

“The person who put you in the taxi paid it. Get home safely.”

When I got out, the cool night air cleared my head. I slowly looked around before entering the officetel.

I pressed the button for the seventh floor, waited for the elevator, and entered the familiar door-lock code. The door opened with a sharp electronic chime.

Should I shower first?

I stood beneath the hot water pouring from the showerhead. After showering longer than usual, I turned on my computer out of habit and opened my blog management page. The visitor count was a little higher than usual.

View new posts. Click.

There were no new posts.

I closed my eyes for a moment. I took several long breaths.

Inhale. Exhale. Then inhale again.

Crackle.

“...Partner. Jaehyeon, are you all right?”

A warm yet chilling voice. A voice waiting for me alongside old jazz.

When I opened my eyes, the radio app on my phone was broadcasting on the 0300 frequency.

“It seems you have returned after wandering through very deep fog. I feared I had lost you.”

I listened quietly, then plugged the microphone jack into my phone.

“I’m here, Hertz.”

“Ah, Partner. What a relief. Did anything happen?”

“It did. But at the same time...”

I swallowed dryly. The silence must have been quite dramatic. My radio friend faithfully waited through it.

“Nothing happened.”

A smile spread across my face. My senses echoed with perfect clarity.

The sensation of walking down an escalator backward. The monster’s hand burning my arm. And the Ghost Story Records Corporation. Mok Inha. The four departments. The horizontal coordinate system. The anchor. Goblin Play.

“Ha. Ha, hahaha.”

Everything remained in my mind like a sharp, high-definition recording, not a single thing missing. The Corporation’s cognition erasure had not worked on me.

“Hertz, was that you?”

“What do you mean? My connection with you was cut off at some point, so all I could do was worry.”

I had wondered whether Hertz protected my memories, but apparently not. Still, that was better.

“I learned a really interesting new fact.”

“That sounds promising.”

The Corporation must have let me go believing they had erased my memories. But they were wrong. I remembered every moment.

Smiling, I brought up the Depth Gauge.

“A very good way to collect real ghost stories.”

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