WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Natty

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◈ How to Rewrite Ghost Stories ◈

Episode 21: Twilight Market (2)

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The child examined the doll’s eyeballs in their palm for a long time with their eyeless face, then beamed and pressed them against their face.

With a wet squelch of flesh being gouged out, blue eyes settled into the mangled flesh of their face and stared right at me.

‘Ugh. I’m scared this is actually going to show up in my dreams.’

“Thank you, mister! What are you looking for?”

I had paid the price according to the rules, so it was time for me to get something in return. It wasn’t like I could wring an item out of a little ghost. What could be worth two eyeballs?

“There’s something I’m looking for, but I don’t know who sells it. I gave you eyes, so could you use them to see where I might find it?”

The child’s eyes sank into the flesh and surfaced again. Hmm. Had that been a blink? Their smile stretched nearly to their ears.

“Okay. Okay! Mister, take my hand.”

The child’s hand was surprisingly warm and soft. They hadn’t stolen someone’s hand and stuck it on, right...? I desperately forced myself to stop thinking about the warmth of their hand.

“There’s a place everyone goes when they’re looking for something. Let’s go there.”

“A place? Ah, wait, what I’m looking for...”

“It’s okay. Everything’s there.”

Holding my hand, the child hopped between the alleys. You could’ve told me the back of your head was cracked too.

Watching all the wrong things twitch, I offered a brief prayer to some god I had never met.

“Here. Here.”

My hand was free. The child had left me in front of an old building and was already some distance away.

“Mister, find what you need!”

“Yeah. Thanks.”

I waved back at the child, who was waving with all their strength. Right. Off you go.

‘Where am I?’

An old-fashioned corner shop came into view behind a wooden lattice, with faded tape letters reading “Ice Confection” and “We Buy Rice.”

‘It’s the kind of store a kid would imagine has everything...’

Then again, a shop this old did seem like it might have it. When I approached and gave the counter a light knock,

“Looking for something?”

A strange gaze and a sign of presence came from the little counter. Something like a lump of blackness sat inside the shop.

“I’m looking to buy oil for this lantern.”

I shook the lantern in one hand, then set an empty bottle I had brought separately on the counter. A black, shadowy hand emerged, grabbed the bottle, and turned it over several times.

“We aren’t selling any right now.”

“You aren’t?”

Things had seemed to be going well, but my plan had gone wrong from the very start. This hadn’t been part of it. I crossed out half the grand plan in my head and thought fast.

“Then please tell me where I can buy it.”

The shadow inside the counter visibly rippled. The hand abruptly shot out again.

“Buy something, and I’ll tell you.”

So that was how they wanted to do this. It worked out either way. Even if I couldn’t get the oil, getting the Ox Hour purchase done here would be useful.

I quickly scrolled through my phone beneath the counter, where the shop owner couldn’t see it.

The Twilight Market series had exploded in popularity because its original creator generously allowed fan fiction and original settings, incorporating well-made ones into the series. There were enough items for sale that they had been catalogued on a wiki page.

‘Thanks to that, I did organize some things worth buying at the Twilight Market...’

But once I limited myself to things an old-fashioned corner shop might sell, none of the items on my prepared list fit.

I flipped through the recommended items appearing one after another. Not this, not this either... Ah. Would this work?

“Please give me Eyeballs That Never Sleep. Do you have those?”

“Five bones and five pieces of flesh.”

A black hand shot out from the counter, opened its palm, and curled its fingers.

‘That doesn’t match the wiki’s listed price at all.’

Ghost stories compiled on wikis couldn’t be trusted blindly either. A note to self.

Many things in the Twilight Market could be traded through barter, and substitutes could be used, like doll eyeballs.

But it was different when the requested price was blood, flesh, or bones. Every attempt at substitution had been rejected in the ghost stories. They had to come from something that had once been alive.

As fresh as possible. Better still if they could be cut from a body right then and there.

“Here you go.”

Still, there was no real problem.

“Bones and flesh. I’ll give you the biggest ones I have.”

I confidently placed the item I had removed from its plastic pack on the counter. Five chicken drumsticks. Not fried ones, but raw chicken drumsticks with their skin intact.

‘When a ghost story asks for bones, flesh, or blood, you’re supposed to feel horror while losing fingers or toes. But what I prepared is flesh, and bone is bone.’

There was only one condition. It had to be fresh. That meant animal parts were completely acceptable.

This was another loophole I had found while developing the substitution theory.

You know the trope. A wild animal gets torn apart in someone’s place, and the ghost looks away for a while. The doll eyes had worked properly earlier too, so I waited nervously for the price to be assessed.

‘Just in case, I even picked chicken slaughtered that day...’

I had considered just buying some at a supermarket, but worried it might be worth less. I went all the way to Majang-dong Market at dawn, asking which animals had just arrived. Please appreciate my effort and value it highly.

“Here. Eyeballs That Never Sleep.”

‘Th-There are so many.’

I had expected maybe five candies in a small container, but the shop owner handed over a slightly rusted 24-count tin. It even felt heavy.

“This is your change.”

As soon as I took the tin, a small box popped out of the counter again.

‘My payment was good enough to need change?’

I should’ve tried bargaining if this was going to happen. Still, maybe getting this would lead to a lucky find. A free gift was always a win.

The box was about the size of the random character-goods boxes you could buy anywhere. When I shook it, it gave a rattle.

Find Your Luck!

That was the product name printed in terrible ink on cheap cardboard. They hadn’t dumped off something meant for disposal instead of giving me change, right? Still, it was free.

“Thank you. Now, where can I buy the oil?”

“Go past three alleys, then enter the sixth shop you can enter. That’s the only place selling it right now.”

“Right now? Why? I thought they sold it all over.”

But the corner shop gave no further answer and rolled down its shutter. I packed my things into my bag and left the alley.

‘What do I do now?’

I shook the random draw box and thought for a moment. The place I needed to go was far away.

The Twilight Market was said to consist of endless passages.

But since it was a ghost story created by people gathering together, elements with similar settings, themes, and time periods had clustered into zones. Those were called alleys.

Each alley sold different things, and the cruelty and level of gore in the prices they demanded differed too. Besides, if the Trash Can Alley, made up of discarded settings, had been recreated, simply moving between alleys could be dangerous.

For the sake of newcomers entering for the first time, the starting point had been set as the Retro Plaza I had passed through. After that, no one knew what alley would appear or where it would lead.

‘First, I’ll cross one and measure how long it takes.’

Not overextending myself was the right answer.

The moment I crossed a covered arcade marking the boundary between alleys, the plaza changed into a realistic 1990s secondhand market. Posters on the walls swayed, weathered by the wind.

“...At least this one is easy.”

Thankfully, it was a fairly well-known, easy alley.

Joy Alley. An alley that showed you a forgotten past that might have existed. But things that should not exist in reality were cleverly hidden within it.

Family members who had died long ago. A list of missing people I had seen in news about an accident not long ago. Even a banner from a school I had never graduated from, saying it was looking for me.

The instant you recognized even one piece of false information as plausible, you became trapped by it. You began to accept an error created by the ghost story as reality. And then,

“Why are you only getting here now? I’ve been waiting thirty minutes already!”

Someone answered the calling voice.

“No, the school disciplinarian suddenly told me to stay after final homeroom. It’s not like I didn’t want to come...”

“But why isn’t Seon Jaehyeon coming?”

“I think I saw him earlier. Why isn’t he coming?”

The necks of two students chatting like game NPCs in front of a closed internet café stretched like earthworms. Their faceless heads were smooth as blank sheets of white paper. Their bodies remained in front of the café while their necks coiled and extended toward me, lingering nearby.

“Why isn’t he coming? Why? Why? Why?”

That was how they tempted you. If I answered even once, they would no longer look like ghosts. They would look like my friends.

Then the person caught would spend a truly wonderful day granting their “friends” requests, without realizing their own body was being sold off and stripped away during that happy day.

It would be better not to come to your senses at all.

One page described someone coming to their senses while cutting off both their own legs.

‘The line, “They couldn’t scream because they had no tongue,” was art...’

What you could buy here were memories and joy. The price was your body. A decaying alley for those who hated reality and willingly locked themselves away.

So the best solution for this alley was to ignore it. I couldn’t see them. I mustn’t.

“Jaehyeon, Jaehyeon. Hey, Seon Jaehyeon. You said you’d play with us.”

“Can’t you hear us?”

Oh, I can’t hear you. As if I could. Keep calm. Stay calm. All I could hear was the radio’s background music, old pop songs.

Keeping my breathing as even as possible, I walked through the alley without looking around. The necks stretched about the length of three shops before finally stopping and returning.

Like an overstretched rubber band snapping back, a faint ting came from behind me.

Whew. I made it out.

I pressed my earphones firmly into my ears once more and checked the time.

‘It didn’t even take ten minutes.’

Another four-way intersection appeared. Blue light lay to the right, red light to the left. The alley I had come from had vanished, returning to black. Ahead, cheerful music drifted from a white glow.

I quickly looked through the Twilight Market alley settings saved on my blog.

Music Alley. An alley combining narrow shops and small metalworking workshops, like the backstreets of old Euljiro. It was easy to recognize because the entire alley was painted white or dominated by white light.

Popular items recorded there included music boxes and instruments that showed the listener endless hallucinations.

Play Alley. A dome-shaped kids’ park that looked like a large indoor playground mixed with a toy department store. It was one of the earliest alleys, designed to best suit the dreamcore aesthetic, and every seller took the form of a young child. That blue light probably came from the children’s ball pit.

It was not a bad alley. Relying on the innocence of children, many things there had absurd settings or effects that concealed cruel things like a cognitive distortion filter.

‘And that red light is probably...’

If I was lucky, Lighting Alley. If I was unlucky, Butcher’s Alley. I swallowed.

If I had been someone swept into this place by accident, I would have run into Butcher’s Alley without a second thought.

True to its flashing red name, it mostly sold biological entities. That meant there was no need for exchanges like, “Give me your head, and I’ll give you an arm.”

You could give up the clothes you were wearing and recover a body part you had lost, or, if you were luckier, adopt an unidentified creature. It was a golden opportunity, but...

‘There’s nothing I want to get right now that’s worth risking Butcher’s Alley for.’

I considered that goblin fire oil might be hanging in a butcher shop beside lard and tallow, but there had to be a reason the shop owner said I needed to pass through three alleys.

‘Then there’s only one answer.’

I would aim for Music Alley. I headed toward the white light.

Footnotes:

The Ox Hour is a traditional East Asian time period, roughly 1:00 to 3:00 a.m.

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