WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Natty
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ How to Rewrite Ghost Stories ◈
Episode 47: Worth It at This Price?
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“…Seoul?”
“Seoul, indeed.”
Somehow, the bus had brought us all the way to Seoul.
[Where are you guys?!]
The radio crackled the moment we stepped out. It was supposed to let us communicate even inside ghost stories, so why did it work outside one too?
Lee Gangrim glanced around, then answered as calmly as if we had just come out for a neighborhood stroll.
“We’re... in Seoul. Near Mr. Seon Jaehyeon’s home, I think?”
[Seoul, out of nowhere? No, how did you suddenly get there from the middle of the submerged site? What did you do?!]
“I don’t know that either.”
Lee Gangrim answered, shooting me a sidelong glance.
“Maybe it’s because we got out by a different method instead of the usual recording process. Anyway, we rescued all three stranded people safely, and we’re standing by. They live in Jecheon, so should we take them back down first?”
Heavy Lamaze breathing came through the radio line reserved for Corporation use.
Getting a report like that would leave anyone beyond flustered. We fell into Jecheon Dam and teleported to Seoul.
[...Understood. We’ll send a vehicle there immediately, so bring the survivors and rejoin us as soon as possible.]
That was Seo Taegyeom’s voice. Lee Gangrim immediately started acting slick again.
“Yep, yep. Don’t you have any better news? We really went through hell.”
[...The Distortion has been declared resolved. Field readings have been confirmed as normal, so return quickly and complete your report.]
At those words, the smile vanished from Lee Gangrim’s face. Lee Gangrim slowly turned off the radio and looked directly at me.
“How did you do it?”
Lee Gangrim’s gaze snapped toward me.
“I’m not sure what you mean...”
“The Distortion.”
Well, then.
“I’m asking how you resolved it.”
“I don’t know either. We just got out. Did something change?”
They were the ones who had never properly explained what qualified as “resolution” in the first place.
Still, Lee Gangrim might not know. That was something I should say in front of Mok Inha or Seo Taegyeom. I took a few Lamaze breaths of my own and kept my temper in check.
“...No. I need to think about it too. I’ll tell you later, once I’ve sorted it out.”
“Yes. Let’s do that.”
The vehicle the Corporation had sent arrived soon after. Maybe the tension had finally drained out of them, but the kids sat together in the back row and promptly fell asleep.
Lee Gangrim sat alone in the passenger seat, while Choi Seongun and I sat side by side, carefully watching the people up front.
‘Wait, why am I watching their moods? It’s not like I did anything wrong.’
Let’s be shameless, Seon Jaehyeon.
I leaned my seat back a little and closed my eyes.
Maybe it was because it was evening, or maybe the Corporation had a secret expressway for its own use, but we made it back to Jangsalgot, where we had set out from, in under two hours.
‘Nothing looks different just because the Distortion was resolved.’
The drained reservoir, the new road, and the remains of the village were all still there.
No, something had changed.
“The boat... didn’t come back?”
“You didn’t come back by boat, so of course it didn’t. You’re here?”
It was Mok Inha. Ryu Hyeon-u and Seo Taegyeom were there too. I had wondered whether they had been caught up in Jangsalgot and we had failed to save them, so seeing them again made relief rise before anything else.
“Are you all right?”
“Fine or not, we couldn’t even reach the edge of the Distortion.”
The advance team said the boat following them had suddenly disappeared, as if it had evaporated. They had hurriedly launched rubber boats and searched with the others, but we had vanished without a trace.
We had been gone for around three hours. Less than half the time we had spent in Jangsalgot had passed outside.
“That happens sometimes. Check the coordinate anchor properly next time.”
Mok Inha appeared to be sorting through the situation while flipping through a chart, but I knew what the cause probably was.
The one difference between their side, which could not get in, and ours, which could.
Whether I, Seon Jaehyeon, had joined them.
The moment the Depth Gauge designated Jangsalgot Submerged Site as a ghost story to collect, I had effectively gained an all-access pass to that place. Strictly speaking, Lee Gangrim and Choi Seongun had been dragged in because of me.
‘...But there’s no need to announce that I’m the all-access pass.’
Even novice gamblers knew that laying all your information on the table at once was stupid. Silence was golden, and information was silver.
After that, things proceeded without a hitch. There was nothing for me to do.
The Corporation handled the detailed testimonies, follow-up work, and preservation of the site according to its manual. Meanwhile, I crouched in a corner, sipped canned coffee, and took the opportunity to “observe” how the Corporation worked.
The students we had rescued gave testimony about the ghost story. There was some of the exaggeration unique to kids, and somehow, in their accounts, Lee Gangrim and Choi Seongun had turned into genius shamans swinging lightsabers...
Anyway, afterward, they received memory treatment from the waiting Ansi unit agents and went home.
They would remember it like this:
They had contacted the email address in a ghost-story video, gone to Jecheon Reservoir in the middle of the night, and found nothing there except a single rotten tree.
Ghost stories were fake. They were plausible fiction.
That was how a ghost story that had been real lost its power.
This process was what the Corporation called recording.
When a ghost story emerged, they went inside, figured out the rules, rescued the stranded people, survived, and returned.
Then they turned all those events into records and verified them.
- I tried it. Nothing happened at all.
- This is a photo I took there. It’s real. I’m telling you, it was there.
- There’s nothing in the photo. That fake is insane.
- I went to the found-footage coordinates myself, and it was just ruins lol. Don’t go. Gas money isn’t worth it.
When a post from someone who had actually experienced it appeared, saying, “I tried it, and it really worked. I think I’m trapped somewhere weird,” they carried out a new recording, erased memories, and moved on.
If they repeated that endlessly, eventually the ghost story became one where nothing happened, no matter who tried it.
That was why the ghost stories so familiar in reality did nothing when you actually tried them.
That was why the Corporation had never contacted me, even though I had filled my blog with posts saying ghost stories were fake.
Everything had been preserved as a recorded case, and I had been contributing to that.
‘...The problem is, this case seems a little different.’
There was no longer any way inside... No, maybe there was no longer any need to go inside...
In this case, the recording itself was finished...
The permanent resolution of the Distortion...
I could hear the Corporation employees talking. I swiped aside the notifications appearing on my phone one by one and opened the Depth Gauge.
Pages filled with information appeared, organizing the archetypes of countless ghost stories and the elements that could frighten people.
007. Jangsalgot Submerged Site
Now that its data was filled in, I tapped it and read through the contents for a while.
Then I formed a hypothesis.
A ghost story registered in the Depth Gauge became completely fake in this world.
Like the Red Mask, naturally left behind as time passed, or the Otherworld Elevator ghost story, reduced to a simple urban legend that never worked no matter how many buttons you pressed.
And if I filled the Depth Gauge completely... if all these ghost stories fell into the kind of fakes I wanted them to become...
[Ghost stories remaining until the next reward: ■■■]
I could obtain the one ghost story I had been looking for.
As a reward for rewriting countless other ghost stories and collecting their archetypes.
‘Ha... Hahaha. Come to think of it, that makes me sound insane too.’
The moment that thought reached me, a cold shiver ran down my spine.
‘What kind of ghost story is Hertz...?’
Could I really trust this bonsai pet that had brought me nothing but convenience as a helpful AI system or a useful assistant?
Maybe it was a poisoned cup decorated with bright flowers and sweet honey, hiding its claws and talons.
‘...I can’t just trust and rely on it blindly.’
Of course, Hertz was still remarkably reliable, and our relationship would probably remain good until I filled the Depth Gauge.
As long as I did not get enchanted.
By the time I finished my canned coffee, the recording process seemed to be over. Ryu Hyeon-u and Mok Inha, who had been packing up equipment, came toward me.
“We’re done. Make sure tomorrow’s event goes smoothly too. We’ll bring in a new boat.”
Ha. Hahaha.
I had not slept, spent the whole evening in another world, raced ghosts, and gone swimming. Yet in only a few hours, I would have to greet VIPs with a smile and run an event.
Once again, I was reminded that the one real ghost story that would never disappear was the work-life balance of Korean office workers.
“There won’t be any problems during the event, right?”
I asked just to make sure. Mok Inha pressed a finger hard into the crease between my brows, wearing an expression that said, Look at this bastard.
“Don’t worry. Even if you beat a drum and rode a blade right in the middle of that place, you’d be fine.”
“I’ll trust you. Still, thank you for covering the loss of the boat too.”
“That’s what our budget is for.”
“Thank you for your cooperation this time, Mr. Seon Jaehyeon. Thanks to you, we were able to complete the recording and verification, as well as rescue missing people, in our first field case. According to the Ansi unit’s examination, there is a high chance we can locate people who previously went missing in this area as well.”
“That really is... the best news I’ve heard.”
Seo Taegyeom bowed politely.
“This case has given us quite a few things to investigate and update as well. We would appreciate your cooperation if the Corporation needs to contact you again in the future.”
I had no reason to refuse. Refusing here would not look good, either.
I gave a light bow in return.
“Understood. Get home safely. I’ll come see you sometime.”
Only then, close to midnight, was I able to return to a business hotel downtown, where I was staying for the night.
“Ughhh... I’m dying.”
The second I opened my room door, I tossed aside my shoes without even properly taking them off and crawled around on the floor. The fact that I managed to wash before getting into bed spoke to my superhuman willpower.
Only after repeatedly banging my head against the shower wall and washing my trembling body did I throw myself onto the bed.
- You have a new notification!
‘...The Depth Gauge? No, it can’t be.’
I immediately tapped the notification popup. I barely opened one eye to see what kind of window had appeared, then sprang up like a tuna on a deep-sea fishing boat.
The screen did not show one of the Depth Gauge’s bizarre system windows.
It was a deposit notification from my primary bank app.
[Deposit Notice]
▶ Sender: Ghost Story Records Corporation
▶ Details: Service cooperation incentive
▶ Transfer message: The taxes are handled. Spend it freely.
It looked like they had sent me some kind of bonus. The message sounded like Mok Inha. Seo Taegyeom had bought me Korean beef bulgogi last time, so maybe it was a few hundred thousand won...
“Let’s see, the amount is...”
I stopped flopping around like a tuna and sat up properly. My tired, gritty eyes flew open. Leaning in as though I were taking an eye exam, I counted the zeroes in the number on the screen one by one with my finger.
“One, ten, hundred, thousand, ten thousand, hundred thousand, million, ten million...”
A breathless groan escaped me.
“...Twenty million won?!”
Cash. Twenty million won deposited into my account as payment for spending one night, no, just a few hours, running around to fact-check a ghost story.
And it was a clean twenty million won after tax, with no strings attached!!
Lee Gangrim’s suspicions, the Corporation’s surveillance, my fear of the Depth Gauge, my worries about how to handle Hertz and the strange thing attached to me.
All of them vanished in an instant.
How much was this money worth, anyway? I could even buy that motorcycle I had once debated getting...
I hugged my phone to my chest and looked out the window. Morning sunlight was rising over downtown Jecheon beyond the motel window.
The dreary, old hotel-window view, the cramped hotel room, the entire world filled with ghost stories...
All of it suddenly began to look dazzlingly beautiful.
The taste of capitalism was sweeter than ghost stories.
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