WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Chen
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◈ Surviving as an Office Worker at the Anomaly Management Bureau ◈
Chapter 42: Volunteer Work
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Yoo Da-on didn’t stay the night.
To be honest, I stopped her. It would have bothered me.
Song A-rin? Why would she stay the night? She only brought a basket of fruit, nagged me, and disappeared.
The day after I was discharged, I went to a nearby bar with Yoo Da-on after work to keep the promise she’d asked of me during the Mountain God incident.
“Did you hear about the volunteer work?”
Yoo Da-on emptied her glass in front of me and blinked.
“Volunteer work? Is it already that time?”
“Huh? You know about it?”
“Yes, I do.”
Maybe because it was officially a public corporation, or maybe it was just a feature of Korean companies, but the Management Bureau always did volunteer work once or twice a year.
I’d gone volunteering right after joining as a new employee, too. Back then, we carried charcoal briquettes.
“What are we doing this time? Carrying charcoal briquettes?”
“Um...”
Yoo Da-on took out her smartphone, narrowed her eyes, and began reading.
“It says the Containment Team, Management Team, and Security Team are exempt from volunteer work because they already have their usual duties.”
That was unsettling.
“Then what about us?”
“The Human Resources Team is... let’s see... Ah! We’re going to an elementary school!”
I let out a sigh at Yoo Da-on’s words.
If it was volunteer work at an elementary school, it was probably educational volunteering. I clearly remembered the Finance Team going last year.
But there was something more important to ask.
“Is the team leader going too?”
“Uh, the team leader took leave that day.”
Come to think of it, that person had taken leave whenever volunteer work came around last year, too.
I didn’t know whether the team leader had done the same the year before that...
“Can I take leave too?”
“There isn’t much time left before the volunteer work, so the internal system probably won’t let you register leave, right?”
“Damn it!”
Right. Our company was the kind of terrible place where you could only take leave if you notified them a month in advance.
If I hadn’t been hospitalized, I would’ve applied.
“Don’t worry so much! It’s not like something like what happened at the workshop will happen again, right?”
“I think it will.”
I didn’t think I was someone who carried trouble around.
Still, I was starting to suspect that the Management Bureau somehow sent us to places where trouble was likely to happen.
“Then we’ll just solve it! We’re good at that!”
Yoo Da-on confidently clenched her fist.
“I’d appreciate it if you also considered all the twists and turns before we solve it.”
“As long as Mr. Jae-heon is here, what is there to worry about?”
Yoo Da-on answered with an unconcerned expression as she poured alcohol into my glass.
“As long as Mr. Jae-heon is here, we, no. I’m not worried.”
“I’m worried.”
“Mr. Jae-heon shouldn’t worry either.”
“Cheers!”
Yoo Da-on raised her glass with a shout, and I brought mine against hers.
As our glasses clinked, she gave me a bright smile.
“I’m here, after all.”
“That is reassuring.”
The same could be said for Jang Chae-yeon and Song A-rin, but Yoo Da-on was always the person I’d entrusted my life to the most.
“That’s enough for me.”
Yoo Da-on smiled and tipped back her glass again.
“Don’t drink too much.”
“Of course! I’m good at controlling myself.”
* * *
“Mmm... Mr. Jae-heon...”
“You said you were good at controlling yourself.”
Yoo Da-on couldn’t even answer my words as she swayed in her chair.
Her upper body rocked dangerously, as though dancing.
“That’s enough. Let’s go.”
“...I don’t want to...”
I slipped under the arm of the bright-red, drunken Yoo Da-on and supported her.
Come to think of it, she’d been like this at a Human Resources Team dinner when Song A-rin was absent, too. I’d forgotten again.
As I groaned and supported her along, Yoo Da-on seemed to regain some awareness. She half-opened her eyes and looked at me.
“Mr. Jae-heon?”
“Are you awake, Ms. Da-on?”
“...”
She stared at me, then lowered her gaze.
“Have you sobered up?”
“...”
“Ms. Da-on?”
“...”
Yoo Da-on only stared blankly at the floor before suddenly blurting out one sentence.
“Why are you so good to me?”
“Excuse me?”
“Is there something you want from me? There’s so little I can do for you.”
What was that supposed to mean all of a sudden?
From what I’d felt while spending time with Yoo Da-on, she had surprisingly low self-esteem.
She was different from Jang Chae-yeon, who was simply quiet, and Song A-rin, who loudly voiced her opinions.
How should I answer this?
After thinking for a moment, I decided to answer honestly.
“What could coworkers possibly expect or want from each other?”
We had come too far together to calculate gains and losses.
If I had simply gone about my life as an office worker in the Human Resources Team without a single twist or turn, I wouldn’t have said something like this.
But too many things had happened for that.
And the person who had been with me from the beginning was Yoo Da-on.
“Besides, Ms. Da-on is good to me too.”
“I...”
Yoo Da-on opened and closed her mouth before quietly allowing me to support her.
After that, Yoo Da-on didn’t say a word until I put her in a taxi.
* * *
In the end, the day of volunteer work arrived.
“Seriously, how does it make sense that I’m going on volunteer work so soon after coming back?”
“If your side had torn a little more, only the three of us would’ve gone. Your luck is unbelievably bad.”
Ignoring Song A-rin teasing me, I boarded the Management Bureau bus.
Though calling it a Management Bureau bus was generous. It was only a tourist bus with <Fun Sightseeing Tour> written on it.
“Wow. There are a lot of people.”
“Attendance is mandatory. Except for those on leave.”
I groaned as I carried my luggage through the cramped bus.
There were countless office workers.
Their one shared trait was that every single one of them looked exhausted.
How was there not one person who looked well?
As I habitually scanned the names floating above people’s heads,
“...?”
Something strange caught my eye.
It was a man.
He wasn’t thin enough to look skeletal, but he was extremely skinny.
He looked around my age, and his vacant eyes were fixed somewhere far away.
That was common among everyone at the Management Bureau, so it wasn’t particularly distinctive.
If I had to describe it, it was a sense of unease.
Something about him felt different from ordinary people.
My gaze naturally rose toward his head.
[Name: Kim Wan-woo]
[Age: 28]
[Trait: -]
[Talent: -]
[Background: 326]
[Weakness: You have already been warned.]
Feeling uneasy, I lowered my gaze.
As though he had expected me to look at him, the man was staring directly at me.
His vacant eyes stared at me, and I couldn’t help looking away.
I hurried past the man and sat in the rear seat with Song A-rin. Jang Chae-yeon and Yoo Da-on sat in front of us.
“...Do you know that person?”
“Who?”
I pointed at the man who had been looking at me earlier. Song A-rin narrowed her eyes as she looked at him.
“...Yeah. I know him.”
“How?”
“He’s similar to you. When I was at another branch, there was an incident there once. They said he was the only survivor.”
“...”
“Whether he has really good luck or good instincts, there are also rumors that he notices in advance everything that will happen to him.”
I looked toward the man.
He sat there with vacant eyes.
What was the number in his Background, and what did it mean that I had already been warned?
“Management Bureau personnel... wouldn’t harm other Management Bureau personnel, right?”
“If they want to face resignation, they can.”
Let’s be careful.
Making a fresh promise to myself, I turned to look out the window.
“Is your injury all right?”
“Yes, more or less.”
“Good. Be more careful next time.”
“I’ll try.”
Song A-rin rested her chin on her hand and looked out the window with me.
“By the way, we really aren’t the Containment Team, right?”
“I told you we aren’t. The Containment Team went downtown today to subdue a newly discovered containment object. Do you want to go too?”
“I’ll pass.”
As I passed the time having meaningless conversations with Song A-rin, the bus slowly headed out of the city.
<Finance Team, please get off for factory labor volunteer work.>
<Marketing Team, please get off to feed containment objects.>
Whenever the bus stopped, the people from each team got off in a line. Finally, even Kim Wan-woo, the man I needed to keep an eye on, got off with his team, leaving only the four of us on the bus.
As the strange atmosphere continued,
<Human Resources Team, please get off for volunteer work.>
The bus stopped, and a mechanical voice came through the speakers.
“Shall we go?”
The bus left as soon as it dropped us off.
Yoo Da-on looked at me curiously.
“Will the bus come when the volunteer work is over?”
“Yes. It’ll come in about a day.”
“A day?”
“That’s how it normally works.”
Strangely enough, when I’d volunteered to carry charcoal briquettes, we had worked all day and slept at an elderly couple’s home.
I looked at the school in front of us.
It was a small elementary school. It wasn’t closed, but it didn’t seem to have many students.
They said it was an era of low birth rates. This might unexpectedly be an easy volunteer assignment.
The person who greeted us as soon as we entered was a pleasant-looking middle-aged man.
“Hoho, welcome. I heard that you came to volunteer.”
“Yes, well. That’s right.”
As though it were only natural, the other three stepped back, leaving me to speak as the representative again.
“Welcome. The caretaker caught a severe cold a few days ago, so... we needed someone to do night watch for a day or two.”
“Excuse me?”
No, if it was volunteer work at an elementary school, wasn’t it obviously educational volunteering?
I turned to look at the other three, and all of them wore equally dumbfounded expressions.
“Excuse me. We understood that we would be teaching children...”
“Hmm? What we received was...”
The man rummaged through his clothes and took out a piece of paper.
<Our staff will provide assistance with various tasks.>
It was even stamped with the Management Bureau mark that only employees could recognize.
I remembered what Yoo Da-on had said.
“They said we’re going to an elementary school.”
Wasn’t it common sense that volunteer work at an elementary school meant educational volunteering?
“It’s all right. It’s nothing difficult. Just make sure the doors are properly secured at night and be careful that no suspicious people show up.”
The principal spoke with a kind smile. I only turned my head to look at Song A-rin and moved my lips to ask,
‘We can’t run, right?’
‘Would that work?’
At her cold response, I could only turn back and nod with a forced smile.
Even if something strange happened now, I could just think, Of course it did.
I had brought a gun just in case, and Song A-rin and Yoo Da-on had brought guns too, so we would somehow manage.
* * *
“...Damn it.”
I hurriedly raised my hands over my head and opened the door.
The door I had been looking down at for quite some time now required me to look up at it.
-Thud-thud-thud-thud!
Something ran down the hallway.
I quickly hid in the cleaning supply closet and looked outside through a gap.
Something crawling on all fours opened the classroom door and came inside.
It had long hair. A small child with black hair dangled from that hair as it crawled across the floor, frantically looked around, then soon went back outside.
I stared hard at its head through the gap, but I could see nothing. The translucent window that had appeared above its head was not there.
I had gained this ability after the college entrance exam... so that made sense.
After leaving the cleaning supply closet and looking around the classroom, I soon found a mirror.
A young child with a tired-looking face stared into the mirror with a grim expression.
“...This is bad.”
When I muttered that, the child reflected in the mirror said the same thing and let out a deep sigh.
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