WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Natty

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◈ How to Rewrite Ghost Stories ◈

Episode 33: Haunted Head Gallery (4)

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Tap. Tap.

Tap-tap-tap-tap.

There were only two sets of footsteps in this quiet, elegant gallery.

Mine, and Lee Daeun’s close on my heels.

‘I don’t know if I’m doing the right thing.’

I had confidently promised to solve the Sephira problem and leave with her, but honestly, I had no trouble saving myself. I could buy something suitable with an item I had brought from Twilight Market, or with my change, and that would be that.

Theoretically, it would not matter whether that company did whatever they wanted with Langwidere’s head, or whether Lee Daeun died or had her head cut off. This was a story inside a ghost story, after all.

Theoretically.

The problem was that I could not bring myself to think of her as a fake character. And Lee Daeun had shown enough goodwill to save me and flee with me.

Then I should at least show enough goodwill to make sure she got out safely.

“Are you hurt?”

I looked at Lee Daeun’s worried face. There was no way that was fake.

“No. I’m fine. I just felt a little dizzy.”

Before long, we reached the entrance to an exhibition hall beneath a glittering chandelier.

Exhibition Hall D: Knocking

“...It’s not heads.”

That was disappointing.

“Still, it looks like a less gruesome exhibit. Let’s get through it quickly.”

Lee Daeun looked composed. Maybe working for an exploitative corporation came with a gore-resistance patch.

“If there are other guests inside, try not to make any noise... And even if an exhibit looks like a colleague, don’t stare at it for too long. You might develop an abnormal urge to buy it.”

“Understood.”

“And if you find a living colleague, give me a hand signal. We need to secure an exit before moving to rescue them, before they become exhibits. Is there anything else we should discuss?”

“Mr. Jaehyeon, you’re not really a civilian, are you? Are you with Mesa? I think I heard that people there wear strange things on their faces...”

Lee Daeun looked at me with an unreadable expression. I shrugged.

“I’m a civilian.”

“It’s strange for a civilian to be treated as a guest here, and that mask is suspicious too.”

“...I just have a knack for disasters, so I come prepared.”

Her stare felt as if it would bore through the side of my face. But it was not a lie. I was just taking an open-book test with the answer key and a cheat code in hand.

In the end, Lee Daeun seemed to accept it. She raised both hands slightly, and that settled the matter between us.

Tap. Tap-tap. Tap-tap-tap. Tap-tap-tap.

Tick. Tock. Tick-tick.

The instant we entered the exhibition hall, the constant sound of something tapping reached us like a soft percussion performance.

Hands protruded from the frames and glass cases that filled both sides of the corridor.

Pale women’s hands, rough callused men’s hands, toothed mechanisms fitted with machines, large hands, small hands, scaly claws, and animal forepaws...

They lightly tapped the surfaces of their display cases in a steady rhythm or snapped their fingers together, playing from sheet music.

“Gasp...”

Lee Daeun, following behind me, drew a sharp breath as she looked to one side. A huge grand piano stood in the center of the hall.

Instead of keys, severed fingers of different sizes had been neatly arranged in rows.

Each time a Curator pressed a key, the finger beneath it was crushed. Bones and joints cracked and splintered, producing a gentle note.

Whenever a note played, the finger fell beneath the piano. Once the fingers connected to the piano strings had piled up high enough on the floor, they were ground away in the gears with a Crunch, crunch.

Then new fingers fell as if on a conveyor belt. They slid down the piano and became keys again.

“...”

Lee Daeun’s expression was alarming. Five minutes, my ass. What if she got enthralled by the music immediately? We would have to stop the piano before we could pass.

I took a deep breath.

“Excuse me.”

The Curator’s neck spun around several times before bending toward me. Instead of eyes, nose, and mouth, fingertips with nails clung to its face like clusters of blisters.

“I have a request.”

The Curator swayed toward me, opening and closing the blister-like growths that seemed to be its ears like flower buds. Each movement came with the sound of finger joints snapping. Crack. Crack.

- Do you like this exhibit?

“No. Could you stop the performance for a moment? The music is flawless, but it’s causing all the other exhibits here to fade into the background. I can’t hear anything else.”

- Would you like me to play an exhibit you prefer?

“No. I’ll experience it myself.”

For a moment, the Curator’s body twisted in every direction as if a strand of DNA were tangling up. Then it withdrew the hand it had placed on the keys. Rising from its seat, it bent at the waist at a perfect right angle and gave us a polite bow.

- Please call if you need anything.

“Thank you.”

Despite its unsteady gait, the Curator elegantly vanished down the other side of the corridor.

“Whew. Is the sound better now?”

Lee Daeun looked at me as if she could not believe it, then nodded. Her eyes, rigid with fear and tension, gradually held a trace of awe toward me. Or perhaps a strange trust.

“How did you do that?”

“I just talked to it. What was your company protocol?”

“If a Curator speaks to us, we were instructed to immediately try to leave the area or shake the Curator off.”

“Were there many deaths before?”

“No. It was classified as a safe phenomenon.”

“Then they must have been laying the groundwork all along. They had enough data on this place’s rules and values, so they probably intended to wash their hands of it with this operation.”

“...That makes sense.”

“...”

The fingers all around us began clicking softly again, like castanets. Lee Daeun lowered her eyes and said nothing.

‘Crazy company. They seemed insane even when I read about them, but they’re worse in person.’

There was no time to comfort her or let her collect herself. I urged Lee Daeun onward, and we crossed the exhibition hall quickly.

The black corridor continued, leading to another intersecting passage.

‘They could have given the exhibition halls subtitles. Where the hell are the heads?’

I checked our directions, searching for a place where heads might be displayed.

Snip, snip, snip.

“?”

From the landing between a chandelier and an exhibition hall came the sound of scissors and a low groan. I reflexively stopped and pressed Lee Daeun close to the wall.

A tall, gaunt being in a tailcoat stood there. In place of a face, it had a phonograph horn. Sharp silver tailoring shears were attached to both arms. Another Curator.

Click-click-click.

Snip, snip.

With something scraping along the floor, the Curator moved away.

“...”

“...Should we check?”

Only after confirming that the passage had gone completely quiet did we cautiously approach the darkness.

“...!”

Lee Daeun jolted and shuddered once.

It was a survivor.

“Do you know this person personally?”

“...Yes.”

“Is he a decent person?”

Lee Daeun looked up at me, puzzled.

Damn it. Had that sounded too much like a psychopath’s question? Or maybe everything I said sounded insane because of this mask.

“What I mean is, is he on our side? Someone we can safely travel with?”

“Ah.”

Only then did Lee Daeun’s expression ease, and she nodded.

“I guarantee it. He’s a good person.”

“Then we’ll rescue him too.”

Fortunately, or unfortunately, the lump of flesh writhing in the darkness was in far better condition than Choi Seongun had been.

His head was bent completely backward, and veins and chunks of flesh were grotesquely tangled beneath his nose.

His face was twisted in pain. Instead of words, a wet gurgle of bloody foam leaked from his throat.

Lee Daeun carefully went to his side and helped him up. She took something from inside her suit and fed it to him. Astonishingly, the man on the verge of death suddenly relaxed. He could even move the chunk of wood fused to him as though it were his own arm.

‘Is that a Da’at product, or something from E Company...?’

It would be nice if I could get one later.

While my mind briefly wandered, the man began retching lumps of flesh from his mouth. Hurk. Hurk.

It looked like his crushed tongue.

Then he took something wriggling like an insect from his pocket and planted it in his mouth. There were several more sounds of foam bubbling from his lips, and the insect squirmed on its own...

Then a voice came from his mouth.

“Th-that, that Cura-”

You have the wrong person. Even if my head looks like a hedgehog’s right now, I’m still human.

“No, this person is a civilian. He saved me.”

Lee Daeun had rescued me, but that was kind of her. Thanks to her desperate defense, he slowly calmed down.

Perhaps his new insect tongue was not working properly. He stuttered again and again. His voice also grew louder and louder, as if it had some kind of amplification function, forcing Lee Daeun to calm him several times.

“Da-Daeun. Ah. You’re... you’re al-alive.”

“Yes. What about you, Senior? Is the team leader alive?”

The man floundered. Anger filled his eyes.

“The team... leader. That bastard abandoned us. No, he tricked us! From the beginning, that bastard pl-planned to aban-abandon us!”

“...I heard it too. Everyone on my team except me was wiped out.”

“What... what do we do now?”

“Do you know where the team leader went? Tell us anything you know, including what he said last.”

He pointed toward an exhibition hall entrance farther up.

“He went... th-that way. Said th-this should be enough to... to buy something.”

“Did he say what he was going to buy?”

“I... don’t know.”

Lee Daeun and I looked at each other almost simultaneously. If the team leader had gone up, we really did not have much time left.

“We’ll explain as we move.”

He did not need support. After creaking a few times, he soon recovered enough strength to follow us.

We passed several exhibition halls.

Hall G. A waterfall of internal organs connected by multiple tubes, like a miniature water slide.

Hall L. A forest of lungs, with pulmonary alveoli instead of leaves, shaped like the long spine of some aquatic creature.

When we passed Hall B, a garden where blood vessels grew like grass and flowers bloomed with warmth, petals shaped like rib cages spread open. Each time they opened, taut vocal cords pulled tight like the strings of an instrument and made a sound.

The refreshing notes and the violin sounds played by the vocal cords opened a vast horizon of art, raising hearing into the realm of sight, sublimating it one by one into stars within a glittering cosmos...

‘You psychopath. Please.’

I pinched my thigh or slapped my cheek every time we passed an exhibition hall. At this point, not only was my sanity at risk, but my stamina was scraping the bottom.

I checked the brochure again.

1F Information Counter, Special Exhibition Hall

2F Exhibition Halls A to F

3F Eve’s Garden (*Not for Sale Exhibition)

4F Exhibition Halls G to L

5F Guest Lounge, Donation Exchange Counter

So far, we had seen halls A, B, D, G, L, C, and I. About half remained.

Judging from the exhibition halls’ letters and their displayed organs, I thought the heads would be in Hall H, for Head, but I could not spot an H anywhere.

‘Should I just go to the lounge and ask them to call the Director?’

I went through every item I had and estimated its value.

‘Not even close. Unless it’s a head on Dorothy’s level, I can’t even try.’

Wait. Dorothy.

Dorothy’s head.

‘...Wouldn’t that work?’

“Mr. Jaehyeon?”

“Is something wrong?”

Lee Daeun and the staff member walking ahead of me stopped and turned back.

Young people.

Two of them.

The head she would like best.

“Why did we only think we had to buy it?”

“Buy what?”

“I mean, the head. That rare anomalous object your excuse for a team leader is trying to obtain.”

“Because... the team leader is after it, isn’t he? And we were used as payment too.”

“That was what I thought, but I have another idea now. Think about it. If it is Langwidere’s most precious and beloved head, where would it be attached?”

This time, the first person to understand was not Lee Daeun, but the other staff member. The insect suddenly poked out of his gaping mouth, then slipped back inside.

“Ah, then...”

I nodded with certainty.

“Let’s go to the garden. Before the team leader arrives, I need both of your help with something.”

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