WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Natty

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ How to Rewrite Ghost Stories ◈

Episode 5: Some Ghost Stories Are Real

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‘It changed!!’

The clear water turned a deep blood-red in an instant. A foul stench began to sting my nose. The black riverbed rose, revealing water ghosts, and one after another they clung to that “lump of a person.”

Rotten bodies, missing eyeballs, faces half broken apart. They shifted between human shapes and black fragments as they cheered, screamed, reached out, grabbed, seized the lump in the water and dragged it down, opened their torn mouths,

and chewed.

Tore.

Devoured.

Sank with it.

They dangled their long tongues, raised their arms, spun as if dancing, latched on, and swam. The current churned, and sobs mixed with screams spread like laughter.

It had been eaten. They believed the thing that fell was a person!

‘It worked. I did it...!’

There was no need to watch any longer. I started running.

‘Please, please, please! Please open. Path, open up for me...!’

The moment I leaped over a rock, the path submerged in bloody water opened up. I ran blindly through the hands scattering in every direction.

I slipped, climbed over rocks, pushed through bushes, kicked tree roots, and tumbled down the mountain trail. My limbs were scratched and scraped all over, but I could not stop or waste time.

As fast as possible, as far as possible. I had to get even one step farther down.

Aaaaaaah!!

A terrifying cry struck the entire mountain. The bloodwater that had retreated began rapidly filling the valley again as it chased after me.

‘Isn't that a little too quick to catch on...?!’

Or not. Had it actually taken them a while? I was the one who cheated, but they were the ones fooled, so couldn't they just let it slide?

A squelching sound began beneath my feet. Rotten hands tore through the dirt, flailing as they tried to grab my ankles.

“Nothing's going to happen just because you ate the wrong thing for one day! Let's just call it that, okay?!”

I ran like mad, kicking away the hands. Several fingers went flying with a wet splat. Kick one away, and three rose up in its place. Sharp wounds kept appearing on my ankles. The hands rose endlessly, becoming a massive wave that tried to swallow me whole. And then,

the next moment,

“Argh!!”

I lost my balance and rolled hard forward. After tumbling several times, my back slammed into a post. I curled up, then raised my head to see wooden stairs in front of me, laid with straw mats and fitted with signs here and there.

[Wait! Are you sure you still want to proceed? This section is an extremely dangerous area where safety accidents occur every year without fail!]

It was the sign I had seen on my way in, complete with blurred photographs of accident scenes thoughtfully attached. Then,

I began to hear a sound.

Bzzzzz...

My smartphone vibrated. Messenger pop-ups poured in all at once alongside every kind of ad notification. The moment I saw my phone displaying the correct time, all the tension drained away and I burst out laughing.

“Ha, haha. I'm alive! Ah! Hahahaha.”

I was alive.

I had made it out.

In a real ghost story, nobody had died or killed anyone. I had thought my way out! The rush of dopamine was nothing like all those fake ghost-story investigations I had done before.

‘Wouldn't this blow up if I posted it on the blog?’

I wanted to go home. I wanted to wash up, lie down, and more than anything, write the blog post as soon as possible. A full record of everything I had gone through, rolling around alone, running, and diving into the water, plus,

‘Real ghost photos!’

The water where hair drifted like seaweed, the crawling hands. Evidence proving that ghost stories were real. I checked my action camera once more and hugged it tightly to my chest.

‘Let's go home. Ah, should I stop by a pharmacy first...?’

Luckily, the final village bus, one of only three a day, was pulling in right then. The village, which had been quiet when I came to the valley, was now fairly crowded. Maybe they were filming something.

I threw on what clothes I had left to hide my injuries, pulled my cap low, and quickly left. I did not want to be interviewed as an injured hiker.

❖ ❖ ❖

After Seon Jaehyeon came down, Chuam-ri's Seondang Village.

People in matching black uniforms surrounded the hiking trail as they headed up. The person in front held up a strange lantern instead of a flashlight. Even in daylight, the lantern cast blue light over the surroundings.

─ [Haetae withdrawal complete. Manifestation removal confirmed.]

─ [Cheonrok entry complete. Recording to proceed.]

Radio traffic came from the lantern. A short-haired woman with a tired expression chewed on an unlit cigarette.

“Chief.”

A large man approached her. Chief Mok Inha gave a small nod.

“Report.”

“It is as observed. To put it bluntly, recording of the manifestation at H-PL-4397, 《Odaesan Bloodwater Valley》, has concluded.”

“Hyeon-u.”

“Yes.”

“Do you think that makes any sense?”

“It is not entirely impossible, but statistically speaking, it is close to impossible.”

“Right?”

Mok Inha, who had been scrolling through reports on a tablet, exhaled cigarette smoke. There were many ghost stories in this world. There was no guarantee that a person would make it through life without getting swept up in one.

Maybe their family was religious. Maybe they inherited a family trade. Maybe they lived on ground claimed by dokkaebi. Maybe the friend next door or the landlord of their studio apartment hid a sorrowful story. On the subway, at work, for any reason at all, people were bound to have chilling experiences in their lives.

And the fate of those swept up in ghost stories, the stranded, was always the same. They died, went mad, or became part of the ghost story.

“We bust our asses to clean up one ghost story, and some civilian walks into one on their own and completes the manifestation recording. Are we bad at our jobs or what?”

“No.”

“Exactly?”

“Yes.”

“We need to find out who it is.”

Mok Inha spat out the cigarette butt and ground it beneath her heel. Not long after she radioed in, a ladder dropped from the helicopter hovering overhead.

“By the time I get back, find that stranded person who escaped from here and put every last bit of information on my desk!”

Mok Inha grabbed the ladder whipping through the air with practiced ease and hooked one leg around it. Amid the loud rush of wind, the helicopter carrying Mok Inha began to rise high into the sky.

“What will you do if you find them?”

At Ryu Hyeon-u's shouted question, Mok Inha gave a crooked smile.

“Why, we'll catch them alive and put them to use.”

❖ ❖

By the time I returned home, the sun had set and risen again.

‘Forget food. I just want to lie down.’

My beloved room, were you well? My clean, neatly organized room, though it had no warmth. I threw myself onto the bed and savored the comfort against my back.

‘...Real ghost stories are a lot more disgusting than I expected.’

I squeezed my eyes shut and forced away the ghosts' 4D images replaying in my head. My needlessly vivid imagination recreated the crawling fingers and water ghosts before my eyes. This was why I hated splatter.

Think of something else. Not ghosts. Something pleasant, nice. Something pretty...

“Ah, the blog.”

The instant I reached the first floor of my officetel, a pop-up said there was a new Guestbook post. When I opened the blog, there was, as expected, only a single link.

≪Please check the link below on your phone. www.Olsonf vorsg.or≫

Extremely suspicious.

But if I did not click it, it would probably be another ghost attack. I knew the pattern now. When I pressed the link, the screen turned black after a brief loading screen, and something installed itself.

----- ...-- ----- ----- kHzPM

‘...That's Morse code.’

What had installed was an app with an old-fashioned radio icon. When I opened it, soft old jazz played from a radio that looked like it was from the 1940s. Then,

Beeeeeeep...

A frequency display writhed across the screen as several seconds of piercing high-frequency noise followed. My ears felt stuffed. The noise stopped, then... began again.

Neither the radio app nor my phone would turn off. The noise repeated, ringing and stopping.

‘It's been playing at exactly the same length and pitch, like a siren, this whole time...’

Holding my throbbing head, I searched my memory. There was definitely a way to figure things out with a noise signal like this.

‘Ah, could I view it with a spectrogram?’

A spectrogram visualized a particular sound signal. The image screens often used for voiceprint analysis were an example. But it was also possible to convert a specific image into sound.

I opened my laptop and started a program. Waiting until the sound began again, I played it through the program. Letters appeared in time with the noise.

─ I've been waiting for you.

“?!”

The noise changed. The spectrogram began drawing letters made of frequencies.

─ Can you see what I'm saying now?

“Who are you? A lucky note?”

─ Your fan, your observer, your personal broadcaster, and your luck. If I must boast about myself, you may call me your radio host, ThreeAM PM.

Talking to noise was not a realistic situation. Was this some kind of ghost? At the same time, it did not seem particularly malicious toward me. I decided to talk to it.

“Why did you appear before me? Do you want something?”

─ Of course. That is why I prepared a gift for you as well. A radio needs listeners, and one must give gifts to those who send in their stories.

This time, the noise continued for a long time, drawing something like a QR code.

When I scanned it with my phone, it was a photo of the mailboxes on the first floor. A package bulged from the mailbox for Unit 703. The mailboxes had definitely been empty when I came up, though?

─ Go on.

After hesitating for a moment, I went down to the first floor. There really was a package wedged into the mailbox. My hands shook as I brought it back upstairs and opened it. The moment I did, a near-horrified exclamation escaped me.

“This is insane.”

It was an old book that looked two hundred years old, its title embroidered in thread on worn leather. I had only ever swallowed my saliva over it, starting with a price tag utterly beyond my salary.

An Eastern European book primarily about alchemical approaches to the afterlife. Astonishingly, the package also included modern-language translations and annotation documents for twenty pages of the book.

My hands trembled violently. Afraid I might damage it if I touched it wrong, I hurriedly set it on the floor. I stared at it for a long time, poked it again, then startled myself. My heart refused to calm down.

─ Do you like the gift?

Did I like it? That word was nowhere near enough. This book alone was worth tens of millions of won. And beyond its monetary value, every item inside was ultra-rare occult material, leaving my mouth completely dry.

“Th-this... is for me?”

When someone was desperate, honorific speech just slipped out.

─ I can give you more.

One ghost-story experience had brought an incredible treasure. My mind was rapidly working out the numbers. If I did this a few more times, could I get all the translations too? Could I obtain things even rarer?

As if it had struck precisely at that desire, a pleasant voice, kind yet somehow cheerful, tempted me.

─ I am looking for “certain stories.” I am looking for the same things you do. You experience them firsthand, and I give you gifts.

The noise formed the shape of the radio app. Looking through the app screen, I found a small gauge bar marked with tiny lines like a thermometer. Something was filling up from the very bottom.

─ Shall we call it a Depth Gauge? Every time you collect a story, its depth will fill. Then you will be able to receive the gifts I have prepared.

Depth Gauge Collection Status: 1 of ■■■ complete

001. Bloodwater Valley

Next reward! New function, new story, new tool

─ Look at the final completion reward.

I pressed the ■■■th collection entry on the Depth Gauge. In that moment, something made of garbled letters and combinations of Korean, English, and words from unknown languages pierced my mind, not as understanding but as intuition.

My eyes immediately turned to the empty space I had left in one corner of my bookshelf. A space reserved for only one thing. The beginning of everything for me, my goal, my most fervent wish.

The first paranormal phenomenon I had ever experienced as a child, seen only once and never found again.

The experience, the being, the world, and the ghost story that had become instinctive reverence at the end of my one and only experience.

Something I could never obtain, even if I spent my entire life seeking ghost stories or invested thousands in gold.

I closed my eyes briefly to think, then let out a long sigh. How could I refuse this?

─ Then can we make a good deal?

No, deals were dangerous. I could not do that. I quickly pulled myself together from my floating excitement.

“...How about we be good friends? A deal is too businesslike.”

The radio fell quiet like a speech bubble holding a moment of silence, then displayed a frequency line shaped like a bright smile.

─ Of course. Friends. That has a very nice ring to it. Then I will ask my friend for a few stories, so that you can find the path you are meant to take. I think you will like them too...

Soon, a new name appeared on the radio's Depth Gauge.

It was a ghost story I knew.

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