WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Natty

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ How to Rewrite Ghost Stories ◈

Episode 18: Goblin Fire Playground (1)

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“Jaehyeon, I heard you struck it big this time? Rumor has it you got a hefty holiday bonus early?”

The moment I entered the staff lounge, Assistant Manager Park from the next team came over, shaking their coffee cup. Teasing mixed with genuine congratulations came from all around. Assistant Manager Park patted Jaehyeon’s shoulder.

“I thought, what kind of jerk shuts things down out of nowhere for an inspection? Turns out it was all part of your plan, huh?”

“You even went for noise marketing, right? There was a line from the department store basement all the way to the top floor. Social media went nuts.”

“The higher-ups really liked it this time. I heard your promotion is confirmed, and you even got an incentive.”

Associate Sung from Human Resources poked me from behind.

When I turned around, Associate Sung smiled brightly, rose onto their toes, and whispered in my ear.

“Assistant Manager, they said you can request two days of special paid leave after you submit the report once the pop-up ends.”

“Really?”

“Section Chief Chae is supposed to get a day too, so the department head probably won’t take it back either.”

Section Chief Chae, who had promised to lend us Assistant Manager Kang, ended up taking responsibility personally after Assistant Manager Kang was kidnapped by another project three weeks later.

They had taken on two projects themselves. For the final installation, they pulled ten consecutive all-nighters, clocking in on Monday and leaving on Sunday.

Coffee wouldn’t be enough with this incentive. I should buy everyone cake too...

Associate Sung gave me two thumbs-up, waved both hands wildly, and vanished into the distance.

Just how big was the hit for Department Head Lee to be this generous?

While buying coffee for the team, I discreetly checked my bank balance. I had expected some tiny amount meant to look good, but...

It was more than I expected. For a moment, I doubted my eyes.

They had dumped in the quarterly incentive. Ha. This was why I couldn’t quit this company.

I was thrilled. I felt generous enough to add waffles to the coffee order. So this was how all those late nights paid off. When this company ground people up, no green juice smoothie could compare, but its financial therapy was incredible.

On the way home, I indulged a little. Goodbye, convenience store lunchboxes that usually got me through the day. A proper lunchbox from the department store food hall sounded perfect.

“...”

A radio being promoted in the event zone caught my eye. The moment I stopped walking, a sales clerk approached with a warm smile.

“Retro is trendy these days. This radio has new features, including a Bluetooth speaker and an LP player! It comes apart like an old-fashioned stereo system, so you can take just the radio with you.”

“Does it use much electricity?”

“It does if you connect everything, but... if you detach the radio part like this, it has a solar cell, so you can even use it outdoors. Would you like one?”

❖ ❖ ❖

“So that’s why you wanted to give me a nice radio as a gift. I’m happy.”

“Let’s call it that...”

After setting up the radio, I answered awkwardly while tidying my home.

Hertz’s voice filled the room with a pleasant resonance. Unlike my phone or old portable TV receiver, the new radio had remarkably clean sound quality.

The Offering Stone I had placed atop the radio as a mascot glowed blue and vibrated from time to time. After shutting down the app again for a while after the pop-up event, Hertz had returned with more updates than I expected.

First, once I tuned the radio frequency, Hertz and I could speak by voice within that space. It seemed to have strengthened the feature using the operating instructions for the Pebbles Mart ham radio device as inspiration.

All that work raising a bonsai pet had paid off. Of course, this conversation only worked when I was alone.

Still, if the choice was talking through high-frequency sounds, spectrograms, and Morse code versus talking by voice, the latter won overwhelmingly. I’d think of the fancy radio as a social media account bought for my bonsai pet.

“You seem popular at work too, and your blog has exploded in popularity, Gii Yadam.”

“You said you liked that name before.”

I answered lightly and opened my blog. Along with the success of The Mirror of the Otherworld pop-up, my visitor count had hit its peak.

Half came through tags, half through pop-up reviews. The post where I had reshaped episodes from The Mirror of the Otherworld into a novel-like review had not merely soared. It had broken through the algorithm.

As a result, tips in the Guestbook were flooding in.

New posts! (532)

“When am I supposed to read all these? Ninety percent are garbage.”

The Guestbook had always received plenty of tips. But it also had plenty of false reports, prank posts, and spam. That was why I had ignored Hertz’s chain letter too...

“But there have to be real tips like yours mixed in there, right?”

Hertz let out a soft laugh at my complaint.

“Have you checked the Depth Gauge? I tried to incorporate your suggestion from last time in my own way.”

When I opened the Depth Gauge, a button that called up the Guestbook appeared amid tiny fireworks.

I pressed it, and the Guestbook opened. At first glance, it didn’t look any different from the version on my blog, but...

“...Ah.”

The letters on the screen rippled. Colors spread across hundreds of tip posts. Most were gray, but some were red, while others glowed yellow as though highlighted.

“What are the criteria?”

“Gray posts are not worth examining. They are false tips that could never actually happen, ones you wouldn’t even feel the need to visit.”

After clicking a few gray posts, I understood. Most were advertisements, and even those were copied from somewhere else.

“Red ones... Yes, they are things that could become stories. But they will mostly be personal experiences that don’t spread.”

I clicked a few. Most were about sleep paralysis, or suffering from spirit illness because they had received a shamanic calling. They might become ghost stories if posted online, but they were not something I could recreate.

If someone at least sent in a report like, “I did X, then Y, and got sleep paralysis. A maiden ghost visits during it,” I could give it a try. But “I have sleep paralysis, please solve it” clearly came from someone who didn’t understand the Guestbook’s original purpose.

“But aren’t all ghost stories real in the end? Personal experiences like these could still work as ghost stories. The Corporation tries to bring them to Closure, after all.”

“Oral transmission and establishment are different. Of course, if such experiences are passed on to others and those people believe them, they can sometimes become stories.”

“Like how a curse comes along with a cursed object even if you don’t believe in it?”

“It’s the opposite case, but similar.”

“True. I’ve never found anything real on C-Bay either... Ah, this filter doesn’t work there?”

“Not that far yet...”

I see. It lacked features. I guess my bonsai pet grows by clearing ghost stories. If I raised it more, perhaps it would eventually grow enough to fetch ghost stories that could fill the Depth Gauge automatically.

After that, I listened to the music Hertz played while sorting through the Guestbook one post at a time.

It didn’t take long to save several ghost story tips I had selected for my fact-checking hobby on my phone.

Now it was time to bring up something I had been considering again.

Ghost Story Records Corporation

Search results: 0

A state organization with no search results even on my blog.

I had looked into the Corporation in various ways, but found little. There was not much information to find. The National Records Office was just an ordinary National Archives. It wasn’t even in Seoul...

They had a phone number, so they seemed to deal with civilians at least.

The business card spun around my fingertips. When Mok Inha let me go, their second mistake had been giving me their card and failing to take it back.

Maybe they had left it with me on the assumption that I would become stranded again, telling me to call in an emergency.

No. It would be better if I didn’t clash with the Corporation for a while.

Instead, assuming there were others like me, it would be better to gather information about the Corporation from outside.

I opened a site I had bookmarked. Its interface reminded me of the labyrinth websites popular in the early 2000s. A pitch-black background, one question, and a field for the answer.

[EPUB illustration 1 text record: Against a black background, nine separately colored Korean syllables, mel / ro / di / reul / ip / ryeok / ha / se / yo, spelling “Enter the melody” appear above an empty input field. From left to right, the characters are red, yellow, red, purple, green, blue, purple, sky blue, and orange.]

It was a dark web known only to those in the know. I didn’t know who ran it or what its IP address was. To enter, you had to solve a question that changed every time.

I entered the letter notes corresponding to the colors. With a cheesy sound effect, a pop-up appeared.

“Connecting to a new link. Would you like to proceed?”

This was the final trap.

I clicked No.

The screen refreshed, displaying a message board against a dark background. New posts kept appearing, only to vanish soon afterward.

[EPUB illustration 2 text record: Against a black background, “ΩΕΛΧΟΜΕ! ΘΥΑΕΡΕΝΤΕΣ” appears in large purple Greek letters.]

I had discovered this dark web in my late teens. It was like a recycling dump where all kinds of urban legends, conspiracy theories, and low-quality rumor sheets were mixed together with real ancient texts, magic, and occult spells.

Most posts remained up only briefly before disappearing, and entire chat logs were deleted every hour.

Even so, posts accumulated faster than they vanished, and there was information nobody else knew.

If I was lucky, there might be posts about the Corporation too. I began searching the archive, entering every keyword I remembered: goblins, civil servants, blue lights, Haetae.

“...Ah, here’s one.”

Only once my eyes were so dry that artificial tears no longer helped did I find a recovered screenshot of a post that had been tagged private and deleted. It was a screenshot of an untagged post, which was why it hadn’t shown up properly in searches.

[Title: Mangsudong Goblin Fire, Sharing]

The small, blurry photo showed blue lights flickering in an alley. At a glance, it was impossible to tell whether they were streetlights or cigarette embers.

The first post had been deleted less than five minutes after it was uploaded. About ten minutes later, the post was restored, with an additional photo.

It showed blue flames wavering inside something like a glass bottle. Beneath it was a broken Cheongsachorong-style flashlight.

“This... is exactly the same as the blue-light flashlights the Corporation people had at the pop-up.”

It wasn’t easy to identify the location from the blurry photo. Using the time when the post had gone up as a reference, I began combing through navigation-view images of Mangsudong.

“The Corporation people were probably at this location at the time.”

Whether there had been a problem there or it had simply been a mistake, they had dropped a blue lantern. A ghost story otaku like me found it and posted it on this site. Soon after, the Corporation discovered it.

The post was deleted, and the Corporation took disposal measures along with cognition removal... That was my deduction.

“So that means something called a Distortion happened here. Then can’t we find out what it is?”

“Partner, won’t that be dangerous? Because of those Corporation people, I couldn’t even approach you, let alone learn what had happened.”

“I know. But I need to know about the Corporation if I want to avoid getting involved with them. How am I supposed to find ghost stories and fill the Depth Gauge while watching my step around the Corporation?”

Whenever I thought about that gorosoe maple sap from last time, I still felt like I was getting my stomach pumped. If I met them again, they might not stop at purification or cognition cleanup. They might actually vacuum my brain clean.

“Please be careful.”

“Don’t worry. And I think I found the place.”

I proudly pointed at the highlighted tip board, the blurry photos, and the monitor displaying my blog’s ghost stories. On the second monitor, the name of the place I had found in navigation view glowed on the map.

Mangsudong Children’s Playground (Closed)

Redevelopment had begun seven years ago, entry had been prohibited, and it had remained an abandoned ruin without explanation ever since.

The photos had also been uploaded and deleted seven years ago.

“Then this means there is some kind of Distortion there that made the Corporation come.”

I immediately grabbed my jacket. This time, I intended to move right away.

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