WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Alyo

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◈ Surviving Among the Anomalies ◈

Chapter 6: Safety Rating

──────

Early in the morning, I started my day with a shower. Beyond the bathroom door, my phone, turned up to full volume, played the news on YouTube, which had replaced TV by now.

[Next up. At around 5 a.m. today, Kim Hyeong-un, the perpetrator of the tree-lined street stabbing massacre, finally died in the hospital. The culprit, who killed twelve people after indiscriminately attacking passersby with a knife on the tree-lined street, was recently found to have been receiving psychiatric treatment. This has led to speculation that schizophrenia may have been the reason behind the crime, which had remained a mystery.]

As hot water poured over me, hot enough to warm my body, I looked in the mirror and met my own eyes.

[I went to university with him. Even back then, something felt off. I mean, he seemed fine most of the time, but every now and then his eyes would turn cold. It gave me chills. I remember thinking that guy was going to cause some serious trouble one day.]

My left iris was brown, while my right looked almost identical at first glance, except for the faint blue tint swirling within it.

[I always had a bad feeling about him, so I didn't spend time with him. I can read faces, you see, and his face had the look of someone selfish, hot-tempered, and prone to treating people like objects. Still, I never imagined he'd do something this horrible...]

The gift Blue Moon had left behind, or rather, the disaster called a gift, still had uses and abilities I had yet to discover.

[Based on an extremely violent game found on Kim Hyeong-un's computer, some have suggested that game addiction caused the culprit to confuse reality with the game. Let's hear an expert's opinion on the matter.]

Well, I'd find out eventually. More importantly, since I was getting moving anyway, I needed to go out today and prepare properly.

[As for the game found on the culprit's computer, Stardew Valley, it appears to be a farming game at first glance. But if you dig deeper, you'll discover that it possesses an extreme degree of emotional violence.]

[Why is that?]

[Along with farming, Stardew Valley lets you interact with virtual people. You can raise their affection, become lovers, and even get married if you keep progressing. But affection can also fall, and players can grow tired of the person they married.]

[What do they do then?]

[They restart the game. Like psychopaths, as if none of what happened before had any meaning.]

[That's truly chilling.]

[The culprit was diagnosed with excessive stress at a psychiatric clinic. That means he harbored great dissatisfaction with society. An ordinary person would have untangled the knot through normal means, such as conversation, compromise, and effort, but Kim Hyeong-un likely had neither the ability nor the will to do so. He probably just wanted to reset everything, like in a game.]

By the time I finished showering, the news I had been listening to was ending as well.

[To prevent incidents like this from happening again, perhaps game addiction should be registered with a disease code, and stricter, more thorough regulations on games should be...]

I turned off the lights in the house, which I might not return to for a few days, and headed outside.

"Let's go pick it up, then."

＊＊＊

Surviving Among the Anomalies had never been popular from the start. At least when I found it, it was nothing more than an ordinary indie game on its last legs.

[Negative Review: This fucking game is insanely hard.]

[Negative Review: Is this a sunfish simulator? Just like the rumors say, you die fucking easily.]

It captured the Creepypasta atmosphere well, and its portrayal of beings humans could not resist was excellent. The problem was that it did both too well, making survival itself impossible.

[Negative Review: 「Figure out the tendencies and countermeasures of randomly appearing Anomalies, then survive for as long as possible!」 <- The game description lmao]

[Negative Review: 「Test your luck while desperately praying that randomly appearing Anomalies don't show up! If you meet one, you're done for!」 <- I fixed the description. What do you think?]

Surviving Among the Anomalies worked like this.

First, the game was turn-based. Each turn, you moved through an area and triggered an event. There were four types of events: positive events, negative events, meaningless small talk with no change at all, and Anomaly-related events. According to the wiki, each had a 30%, 30%, 30%, and 10% chance of appearing.

Second, if you got any event other than small talk, an image and a text description of the current situation would appear. After reading it, you typed what you wanted to do, and the linked AI program produced the result.

Those two points were the entire game system. It was simple, but precisely because it was simple, it was disastrously difficult.

[Negative Review: This game feels like playing TRPG. A garbage TRPG where the dice go from 1 to 99, but you roll a 1 ninety-nine percent of the time.]

That was because there had been no information about the Anomalies at the time. Back then, there was no gallery and no wiki. Information on Anomalies existed only in the developer's head.

[Negative Review: Shouldn't you at least give us a hint about what the Anomalies want or why they're doing this? There are plenty of ways, like adding a library or a case journal. But this fucking game tells you to bash your head against a wall with no hints, then makes it a free-response question instead of multiple choice? Does the developer not have a mother?]

└[Developer Reply: Anomalies are beings humans cannot resist. I made this game for the fun of learning about them, but if there is too much information, it wouldn't be fun.]

└[It's not fucking fun now, either.]

The developer was deeply devoted to the craft and loved the game, but lacked an understanding of the public.

[Guys, I made a game. Want to try it?]

[Surviving Among the Anomalies? What the hell is that? Don't dump any random shit in the Indie Game Gallery.]

I found the process of figuring it out interesting, so I hoped the game wouldn't fail. Fortunately, the developer was capable of improving. They compromised those artistic principles and began accepting other users' opinions. A gallery was created, then a wiki, and information about the Anomalies spread widely. Though difficult, the game earned a reputation as a standout Creepypasta game worth playing.

‘It ended up plastered with Destruction Endings after listening to other people's opinions too much, though.’

Not every Anomaly clamored for ruin and destruction. Some were useful tools, while others were simply strange beings.

‘Anomalies of a grade that cause absolutely no harm to humans.’

Safety Grade.

From now on, I was going to meet a few of them.

＊＊＊

『Gangbyeon, Gangbyeon Station. The doors will open on the left.』

The history of humanity is the history of class struggle.

-Where are you headed?

"One ticket to Yangyang, please."

People always tried to create hierarchies, divide themselves from one another, and gain a sense of superiority through rank. That had not changed in modern times. They had started dividing things into grades in countless fields.

"Will we stop at a rest area on the way?"

"Why? Worried about the bathroom?"

"No. Rest-stop walnut cakes are sacred. You aren't going to eat any?"

"You can't eat on the express bus, can you?"

"We can finish them outside before getting back on."

Whether the university someone attended was in Seoul or the provinces, national or private.

Whether the car they drove was imported or domestic.

Whether their workplace was a major corporation or a small or medium-sized company.

"Then we'll be departing now."

Anomalies had ranks as well, divided into four grades.

"We'll take a ten-minute break at the rest area~"

The most destructive was the 「Destruction Grade」, the classification for Anomalies with the power to destroy something.

Even within the same grade, the gap was immense. Some could only destroy a single city, while others could destroy a region, a country, a continent, the world, or even the universe.

"Then we'll be departing now~"

"Driver! Wait a moment! We haven't gotten on yet!"

"Mmph! Mmmph!"

"Ah, shit! Swallow it before you talk! That's gross!"

The next grade was the 「Danger Grade」, one step below Destruction Grade.

They possessed great power, but they could be stopped through physical attacks or tended to produce only a small number of victims.

"We've arrived in Yangyang~"

Third came the 「Symbiosis Grade」, Anomalies that did not harm humans first or had no interest in humans at all.

Depending on how they were used, they could help humans or cooperate in sealing or eliminating other Anomalies. On the other hand, if handled or treated improperly, they could become dangerous at any time.

"Where are you headed?"

"Do you happen to know where Daerim Bookshop is?"

"Daerim Bookshop? Ah, that place! I know it. Shall I take you there?"

"Yes, please."

And lastly, the 「Safety Grade」 I had come to meet.

"That'll be 8,900 won."

"Thank you."

Yangyang was unfamiliar to me, since the only place in Gangwon Province I had visited was Cheorwon. Still, I knew the shabby building in front of me, which looked as though it had been built in the 1980s, very well.

‘You visited Yangyang, Gangwon Province. While you wandered the city to see if there was anything worth seeing, your gaze became fixed on an old, shabby bookshop, as though you had been enchanted.’

I checked the paint-chipped sign hanging above the door.

‘The bookshop's name was 「Daerim Bookshop」. When you stepped inside, the musty smell of old books greeted you.’

The musty smell of old books greeted me as I opened the sliding door and entered.

‘The elderly owner of the bookshop showed no interest in me. Their attitude seemed to say that I should buy something if I wanted to, or look around if I didn't. As I looked through the bookshop, I found a strange book.’

Ignoring the elderly owner's indifferent attitude, I looked around the bookshop and found a strange book resting atop a bundle of old books stacked in a corner.

‘The book was pure white. Its cover and pages were entirely blank white. The book with nothing written in it looked like a notebook at a glance, but it was the only thing in this shop that looked new.’

I checked the very last page of the book, which was pure white from cover to pages.

‘At the center of that final page, these words were written.’

[May the one who finds this have good fortune.]

‘May the one who finds this have good fortune.’

＊＊＊

As I bought the book, I tried speaking to the elderly owner to ask where they had gotten it.

"One thousand won."

"When did you get this book?"

"One thousand won."

"Could you tell me where you got it?"

"One thousand won."

The elderly owner only repeated the same response like a parrot. A proper conversation was impossible.

"I don't have any cash, so let me get some money..."

Before I could even finish, a card reader was produced. It felt like someone taking out a smartphone in a movie set in the 1980s, awkward and quite funny at the same time.

"Thank you. I'll come again sometime."

On my way to find a motel for the night, I thought about it.

‘Had the bookshop always been there, or did it appear when the Anomalies became real?’

Not every Anomaly appeared through random events. Certain Anomalies appeared at fixed locations with a set probability, and the book I had just obtained was an Anomaly that appeared on the fixed map called Yangyang.

‘Come to think of it, I believe the maps were made for Anomalies like that.’

I had not tested it yet, so I bought a pen at a convenience store on my way to the motel.

"The mother of success isn't failure. It's experimentation."

After getting a room, I wrote something on the first page of the notebook. When I closed it, something appeared in my head.

[Notebook in My Head]

[Grade: Safety Grade]

[A pure white book with a blank cover and blank pages. Anything written inside is stored in your mind and can be recalled at any time.]

I laughed.

"Got it."

One worry had disappeared.

Footnotes:

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