WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Chen
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◈ Surviving as an Office Worker at the Anomaly Management Bureau ◈
Chapter 69: Mascot Costume
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A silence followed.
“Lee Cheol-su. Watch the right.”
“Yes.”
“Park Hyeon-yeong. Watch the left.”
“Yes.”
“I'll watch the front, and Kim Jae-heon will watch behind us.”
“Understood.”
They were calm. Someone had just died, yet they kept walking forward without the slightest hesitation or grief.
“Do you think it's strange?”
She spoke to me without taking her eyes off the path ahead.
“I do.”
“That makes sense.”
She replied matter-of-factly and checked the wrist around which she had wrapped the balloon string.
After what had happened earlier, we had decided to keep our balloons close to our bodies.
The problem was that, being helium balloons, they floated overhead if left alone.
I had a pistol, so I could keep mine tucked inside my clothes. The others could not.
“What do you see behind us?”
“...Nothing.”
There was nothing that caught my eye.
Only a red streetlamp stood there, its ominous light flickering.
“Nothing on the right either.”
“Nothing on the left.”
“I see. There is something ahead.”
After a brief silence, she spoke again.
“There are people, things that are not people, and mascot costumes.”
“How dangerous are they?”
“I don't know.”
Then I needed to step up.
“Let's switch.”
“Alright.”
Aileen switched places with me without a moment's hesitation.
Our eyes met briefly, and then she spoke.
“This is an order. I will continue to make judgments and give orders in normal situations. But if an urgent, incomprehensible, or unexpected situation arises, Kim Jae-heon's opinion takes absolute priority.”
“Understood.”
The two answered her mechanically.
Just as I began wondering what made her trust me this much, she spoke again.
“I'll explain later. For now, tell us what you saw.”
Right. This was not the time to share my questions with her.
I narrowed my eyes and looked ahead.
The park still glowed red as it played that chilling song.
There were exactly three kinds of people.
First, there were those who looked like ordinary people.
They held balloons in their hands and walked along, chatting happily.
Then there were the people in mascot costumes watching them.
Finally, there were people whose entire bodies had been slashed to pieces.
Information soon began appearing above their heads.
[Name: Guest]
[Age: X]
[Trait: Guest]
[Talent: Guest]
[Background: This person is a Guest because they carry the mark of a Guest.]
[Weakness: They are only ordinary people. If you kill them, they die.]
First were the people holding balloons and laughing cheerfully.
Their mouths were grotesquely torn open. They walked with the bouncing gait of children, waving their arms and legs strangely.
The balloons they held were no different from ours.
After watching them, I turned my gaze to the people in mascot costumes.
Every one of the costumes was bizarre.
There was a cat mascot with only one eye, a dog mascot with only one ear, and enough disturbing costumes to make anyone uncomfortable.
Soon, my eyes began drawing out information.
[Name: Mascot Costume]
[Age: X]
[Trait: Driving Out Non-Guests]
[Talent: Finding Non-Guests]
[Background: They find Guests who are not holding balloons and drive them out.]
[Weakness: There are times when mascots must carry out the tasks they have been given.]
“...”
They found Guests and drove them out.
Naturally, my gaze shifted to the people whose bodies had been torn apart.
Of course, since my eyes could not see information about corpses, they gave me nothing.
“...Let go!”
I snapped my head toward the distant sound.
It was a delinquent-looking man in a baseball cap.
A duck mascot with no eyes was dragging him over.
“Hey, you! Do you know who I am? Do you?”
He shouted at the top of his lungs. At the same time, the other three moved in behind me.
“Should we intervene?”
“No.”
Aileen answered sharply and stepped beside me.
“Ghk!”
One mascot roughly forced the man to his knees.
“Wait. Is this blood?”
His face went pale as he saw the blood soaking the ground.
“This is a joke, right? A joke?”
“Guest.”
A low voice, like metal scraping against metal, came from what appeared to be the mascot's mouth. The man froze when he heard it.
“What is this? What's going on?”
“You need a balloon to enjoy the amusement park.”
“What...”
Before he could finish, the duck's yellow beak split open.
“Uh... Uh! Aah! Aaaaah!”
The man saw something inside it and began screaming madly as he tried to rise.
-Crunch!
Half his body vanished into the duck's mouth, leaving only his lower half behind to stagger before collapsing onto the ground.
Blood splattered everywhere, but the Guests paid it no mind. With the corners of their mouths raised, they walked as though dancing.
-Welcome to joyful Sora Land!
As the grotesque song played, people danced around the man's corpse.
The mascots did not even turn to look, as though nothing had happened.
“...”
The duck mascot stared blankly at the man's lower half, then turned and headed elsewhere.
“You said he didn't have a balloon.”
“That's right.”
Aileen spoke calmly as she took a notebook from her clothes and began writing.
Why wasn't she writing it down in the Manual?
After wondering about it for a moment, I looked at the balloon tucked inside my clothes.
Was this something like an admission pass? Had that man entered without receiving one?
“Any other paths?”
“None.”
“Same here. There are trees beyond the fence, but they are moving a little... strangely. It looks as though something is perched on top of them.”
“We'd better not go that way. There really are no other paths?”
“We have confirmed it.”
“Alright.”
Aileen nodded, looked at the balloon tied around her wrist, then turned toward the man called Lee Cheol-su.
“Lee Cheol-su.”
“Understood.”
He nodded and slung his gun over his back.
“Then I'll go first.”
He straightened up confidently, took a deep breath, and walked forward.
Did he not feel fear? Or was this how the Response Team operated?
Holding his balloon, he continued forward with steady steps.
Like the others, he held a balloon in his hand, but his gait remained disciplined.
Soon, the mascots turned their eyes toward him.
“...”
“...”
Should I prepare to fight just in case?
I still did not have any Critical.
I drew my gun and Butane Gas, holding my breath.
The mascots watched him for a moment, then looked away and resumed surveying their surroundings as though he did not matter.
“Let's go.”
Aileen raised the arm with the balloon tied to it and strode forward. I followed her inside.
The mascots looked at us too, but none of them paid us any attention beyond a passing glance.
“I don't think we should stay here long.”
“I agree.”
I whispered to Aileen, and she whispered her reply back.
The mascots were not what worried me.
It was good that they were not attacking us, but I could not stop thinking about the Guests wandering around with smiles on their faces.
Even though they held balloons, they could not be called proper people. They simply had not died yet.
Soon, I spotted the kind of map often found in amusement parks.
[Welcome to Sora Land!]
The metal sign was so rusted that it was hard to read, but I managed to make out the words.
<Adventure Land>
A picture of a faceless cowboy holding a person's head.
<Fantasy Land>
A picture of a horse with twelve legs chewing on a person.
<With Nature>
Every picture here had been scratched out so badly that I could not tell what they depicted.
So that was everything.
Just as I was about to tell the others, I noticed writing below that looked as though it had been engraved recently.
It was written clearly into the metal plate in neat, beautiful handwriting, as if someone had put great effort into it.
<You Must Go to Adventure Land!>
I knew the owner of this handwriting.
“...Team Leader?”
It was the Team Leader's handwriting, remarkably beautiful despite their age, gender, and appearance.
I had once teased them by asking if they were a high school girl because of that handwriting.
Only then did my heart begin pounding with both tension and relief.
Were the others alright? Had anyone been hurt?
I told the others what I had found, and Aileen made her decision quickly.
“Alright. Then we'll go to Adventure Land.”
“Are you sure?”
“To be honest, when I heard that your colleagues entered this place, I doubted they could even survive.”
She looked at me.
“But since you have confirmed this yourself, we should save them if possible.”
“They'll be fine.”
They were not people who would be easily defeated.
We headed toward the place marked <Adventure Land>.
As long as we carried balloons, no one harmed us. Thanks to that, we reached Adventure Land safely.
But then who had popped the balloons?
A sign soon appeared before us.
<Welcome to Adventure Land!>
It was a relatively clean sign.
<Sora Land's Adventure Land is a place that heightens visitors' spirit of adventure! We hope you make thrilling and beautiful memories here!>
<Adventure Land has a total of three attractions. However, one is currently under construction, and we will do our best to open it as soon as possible!>
<Test your speed and spirit of adventure in Cowboy Adventure!>
<In Run, Cheollima!, face your courage and a sad story!>
The descriptions of the two attractions were written clearly, but the description for the remaining attraction had been covered in black ink.
Aileen narrowed her eyes at the sign.
“In situations similar to this one... there have been cases where the attraction itself was an exit, and cases where you only gained the right to escape by riding an attraction.”
“...”
“What do you think?”
“My opinion?”
My gaze naturally shifted to the attraction marked <Cowboy Adventure>.
The area around it had been violently damaged.
Large holes had been punched through the walls in several places, and bloodstains were scattered everywhere.
The strange thing was that there was not even a trace of a corpse.
“Shall we go there?”
There were not many people capable of leaving such unusual traces.
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