Translator: Wan ED/PR: Personal Ghost
⟨Chapter 37⟩
Yu Dan looked at Baek Ran. Feeling the gaze, Baek Ran also slightly turned towards him.
“What is it?”
“I have something to ask you. If I’m dragged into the box, will you save me?”
“No.”
Did he speak point-blank without even thinking about it? He was about to grumble, but he discovered something.
There were several holes piercing through the plywood in front of his eyes. Among them, there was a small hole on the crouching Yu Dan’s eye-level. It was unusually black.
He met gazes with it.
In that darkness, several bloodshot veins were spreading out.
That was an eye. Gokdugi’s eye.
His body turned freezing cold.
A cold chill went up his spine from the ground. Yu Dan looked down. Gokdugi’s black hand at some point stretched out through the plywood and grabbed the hem of his clothes.
“What should we do now?”
Blindfolded Baek Ran asked.
He had no answer. His head wasn’t cooperating.
“The cogwheels are broken, eh? Even so, someone has to choose.”
Baek Ran stretched out his hand. He plucked off the small fingers tightly grabbing Yu Dan’s clothes one after one, and instead made that hand grab onto his clothes.
Yu Dan was startled.
“What are you doing?”
Instead of answering, Baek Ran asked Gokdugi.
“A fox or what not, didn’t it keep annoying You from the beginning? It won’t interfere any longer and will just disappear.”
Gokdugi dragged out Baek Ran.
The two sneaked out together to the space under the plywood. Baek Ran unfolded his blindfold, and squinted his eyes slightly as if the darkness was too bright for his eyes. Yu Dan asked.
“Disappear? Where are you going?”
“I’m going to enter the box. I prepared the last resort there.”
His heart sunk.
“By the last resort you mean…”
“I also made a choice just now. I’m determined to see if everything goes to ruin as a result of that choice.”
Baek Ran smiled.
With that, he waved his hand as if saying goodbye, and entered straight away. The white figure melted into the darkness.
“Wait!”
Only Yu Dan’s voice futilely echoed in the empty space.
He stood blankly in the darkness, and thought.
Now only I and Gokdugi remain.
What to do? The broken cogwheels barely started to turn again, but… He had no idea what he should do at all.
Can he break it? What about the fox and the child?
How the hell to end this game?
Gokdugi didn’t exactly urge him and just stared at him with eyes full of blackness and blood vessels.
Does it also want to put me in the box? But I can’t allow that.
Yu Dan opened his mouth.
“Isn’t the hide-and-seek getting a bit boring now?”
It didn’t react.
“Why are you like this?”
Instead of answering, the monster raised its hand and pointed at Yu Dan’s left eye.
“What about this eye? You don’t like it?”
This time it pointed at the blindfold at the floor.
“You want me to also cover my eye?”
He was dumbfounded. From the looks of it, they probably made a wrong choice of playing blind man’s bluff.
Gokdugi seemed to have no plans on moving until Yu Dan put on the blindfold. Because he was scared that he would break the fun of the game if that continued, he picked up the blindfold and tied it around his left eye.
In that moment, a sharp pain stabbed his eye. It felt as if a saw went through it.
Another wrong choice?
He thought through the pain.
I don’t know. What the hell does it want? Why is it like this?
He recalled the fox yokai’s words.
If they can’t get to us through a conversation, they will try to bring us into our world. The female ghost was like this, she grabbed his hand to speak.
Then he could also do that.
With such a thought, Yu Dan tried to grab the hungry ghosts’ hands, but the fox stopped him, saying it was dangerous.
But wasn’t the situation right now more dangerous?
He decided to make a choice.
Yu Dan grabbed Gokdugi’s black rotten hand.
It seemed that Gokdugi was surprised. It tried to pull its hand out, but Yu Dan didn’t let go.
“Let’s go. To your world.”
The darkness started to spin.
The broken television turned on again. He heard a children song.
「 Once the bell rings, sunrakkun scatter,
and people can’t wander around.
To play, children grab the watchman’s stick,
and until moon’s shadow sets don’t come back to the yard.」
Together with the hide and seek game’s song, he had a dizzy feeling as if he was sucked somewhere. After the dizziness subsided, he opened his eyes.
He no longer was in the abandoned house.
In the living room from glossy wood hung a shining chandelier. On a wall was a family picture of a young couple and a girl. When in confusion he looked around, he saw furniture like a piano, sofa, etc.
Yu Dan looked down.
There was a child there.
It wasn’t Gokdugi. The short hair and clothes were the same as Gokdugi, but it wasn’t a monster, it was a living person. At least she looked like a living person.
The child shook her head. She waved her two hands, as if saying ‘No. No. Not that.’
“What is it?”
Then a ding-dong of a clock rang out.
The child was startled, turned around and ran way. The skirt fluttered as if dancing.
“Wait!”
In the quiet house, footsteps rang out.
He tried to grab her again, but the child was nowhere to be found. He turned around the corner, following the fluttering skirt, but found nothing. Thinking she was hiding in some other place, he turned around, she suddenly jumped out from under a chair and fled.
The hide and seek started again.
But the child’s face didn’t show any kind of enjoyment. It seemed she was forced to play.
Why was that?
While he was lost in thought, the child completely disappeared. Yu Dan looked around. Confirming that the child wasn’t visible anywhere, he slightly lifted the blindfold on his left eye.
The enormous wardrobe in the second room entered his eyes.
Here it is.
He ran up to it and grabbed the wardrobe knob.
“Are you here?”
Only a click sound came out, it didn’t open. Even a wardrobe can be locked? Yu Dan looked through a gap inside.
And he was startled.
A girl was crouching inside the wardrobe, hiding. But what startled him was that there was another girl lying beside her. There was no life in her glass-like eyes. Around the child, an enormous puddle of red blood was pooling up.
Two children…?
He was speechless for a moment at that unexpected sight. Unknowingly he took a hesitant step back.
At that moment.
Kieek.
Something like a scream rang out in the house.
Yu Dan looked back. The entrance door was slightly open.
The wardrobe doors suddenly opened, and the child dragged Yu Dan in with a pale face. With an amazing strength, she forced him to come in.
“What is it?”
The wardrobe door closed with a bang.
“Why are you like this? Who came?”
Shh —.
The child put a finger to her lips.
They heard thudding footsteps outside. Yu Dan looked out through the wardrobe’s gap.
Several black figures were wandering around. The moment one of them turned around, a sharp thing gleamed in their hand.
A scream was heard on the other side.
With the door to the master bedroom wide open, he saw two people laying drenched in blood. One was a man, the other was a woman.
“Your parents-nim?”
Yu Dan looked at the child with a horror-struck face.
Shh—.
The child put the finger again to her lips. Her big eyes were full of tears.
What the hell was happening?
Were those robbers? Did they murder her parents-nim?
Outside, the thudding footsteps continued. The child trembled. She trembled so much.
“It’s okay. It’s okay, so…”
The accent of the one who said that was thick.
Wasn’t that a lie?
They were searching all corners right now. And there was a family photo hanging on the wall. Looking at the photo, they would know that there was a child besides the parents in this house. After all, he saw how it all ended. Wasn’t Gokdugi’s chest dyed with blood?
Gokdugi. The child, who died playing.
“Is this your game?”
The child just continued to tremble. The sound of choked breath mixed with hyperventilating. Even right now, she seemed to be hyperventilating.
She probably desperately wanted to believe it was a game. Inside this wardrobe.
“Yeah. It isn’t real. We’re playing hide and seek. Your parents-nim, the man over there, everyone is playing with you.”
The child nodded quickly, as if saying ‘that’s right’.
“But will you really continue to play it? Don’t you want to end it now?”
A heavy thud came from somewhere. Horrified, the child pressed herself even more into the corner, tightly hugged her knees and shook her head.
“You don’t like it? You don’t like ending it?”
The child shook her head even stronger.
“You don’t know? You also don’t know how to end this?”
He heard thudding footsteps behind his back.
They came. Creak-creak. The wardrobe door behind him shook roughly.
Yu Dan blocked the wardrobe door with his back.
“It’s okay. I’ll block it, so it won’t open. It can’t open. That door isn’t real, you know? This space exists only in your head.”
Was he talking to the child? Or was he talking to himself? Was it a fact or a hopeful wish? He mumbled without being able to distinguish.
His head was spinning. Because he wasn’t an expert like Baek Ran. He had no idea how to use what.
But one thing was certain.
The end was already decided, but even though he couldn’t change the end by coming now, he never wanted to see that child being stabbed with a knife again. To be stabbed and collapse in a pool of her own blood…
Wait a moment.
He was suddenly struck with a realization.
And thinking about it now, he forgot for a moment. When he looked inside there a moment ago, he clearly saw one more child.
But looking around, there was only darkness. A darkness so black it hurt his eyes.
“Do you perhaps have an unnie or dongsaeng?”
There was no reply.
No. There were no sisters. There was only one child in the family photo—.
Peuk! Something stabbed his back and came out on the other side. His mind turned white because of the sharp pain.
Yu Dan looked down at his chest.
Red blood shot out and his whole body was dyed red. Did he get warm chills? In the instant, it became cold because of the unpleasant sensation of the clothes sticking to the skin. Blood droplets on a smooth surface of the plastic button. Everything was so horribly vivid, but…
It was fake. An illusion.
He shook his head and denied all sensations.
Let’s think. He had to use his head.
Didn’t he shout at the fox yokai?
He would be careful and even more careful. He wouldn’t only think of wanting to think, he wouldn’t roughly pass over anything really important.
So he had to think.
He once again recalled the situation from a moment ago.
Gokdugi was playing hide and seek. She was already playing before those strange men holding the knives came. But hide and seek can’t be played alone, right?
Then who was she playing with?
— A child lying in the pool of blood.
While Yu Dan kept blocking the wardrobe door, he stretched out his hand deep into the darkness.
The space twisted around his fingers. Consciousness and feelings. The present and the past overlapped. The things he brushed against, was it debris or bones? He shivered at the chilling sensation as if going through the stomach of a dead snake. But he continued to stretch out his hand. The powerful memories, which he hoped would remain buried forever in this place, screamed and coiled around his hand.
… the wardrobe door swung open and they brandished their knives. The chest of the child, who hid among the clothes, was pierced and she collapsed…
He gritted his teeth at the memory of that terrible death.
He hated it. He really hated it. Why such things happen in this world?
He wanted to retract his hand. But right now the fox yokai and the child that had to be found were locked in the box somewhere.
If he runs away, who will take them out?
He gritted his teeth and stretched out his hand even further.
He crossed time and at last came into contact with something. A cloth hardened because of the sticky, coagulated liquid.
“Found it.”
He pulled it from the darkness.
It was a very old doll. Wearing a black dress, perhaps blood turned it pitch-black… it was the child’s real playmate.
How come? It wasn’t sadness, or pain, but a single cold tear flowed down his cheek from the blindfolded eye.
“Here she is. She hid really well, right?”
The child slightly parted her lips, as if saying ‘ah!’, and she hastily stretched out her hands to grab the doll. Her still tear-stricken face laughed for the first time. As if awkwardly saying ‘Right, I lost her.’. As if saying in relief ‘Now I found her.’.
Looking at that smile, he recalled.
A long time ago. When he was young. Wasn’t there a moment while he was playing numerous games with friends when he felt ‘This is really the end’?
He recalled the words he said at that time.
“It was fun. Let’s play tomorrow.”
The child nodded.
Once again, this time she smiled brightly.
Then she swirled. The moment her short hair shook and drew a line, the chair broke down like puzzle pieces from head to toe.
The monster’s spell was broken.
The black darkness withdrew, as if erased, and the twisted space slowly returned to its original form.
Yu Dan looked around.
Abandoned house again.
He heard the sound of something crumbling with a crush.
As he hurried towards it, he found a dust cloud raising from the place where the second room’s wardrobe was. Yu Dan coughed and stepped back.
“Is there anyone here?”
Only silence.
His heart pounded loudly.
*~*~*
Translator’s note: You worked hard Yu Dan ㅠㅠ
Also, Yu Dan’s sick/hurt because of supernatural count: 4
Patron thank you note:
Thank you patron, Nobody, please accept this Arthropodium cirratum’s flower as a token of my sincere gratitude.
Thank you patron, Al, please accept this Chamaescilla corymbosa’s flower as a token of my sincere gratitude.
Thank you patron, Dust, please accept this Chamaexeros fimbriata’s flower as a token of my sincere gratitude.
Thank you patron, Maru, please accept this Cordyline fruticosa’s flower as a token of my sincere gratitude.
Thank you patron, kamisonk, please accept this Dichopogon capillipes’s flower as a token of my sincere gratitude.
Thank you patron, Kasimir Ilmonen, please accept this Laxmannia grandiflora’s flower as a token of my sincere gratitude.
Thank you patron, Tara Hess, please accept this Xerolirion divaricata’s flower as a token of my sincere gratitude.
Thank you patron, Ice, please accept this Trichopetalum plumosum’s flower as a token of my sincere gratitude.
Thank you patron, anonymous Kofi-supporter, please accept this Thysanotus manglesianus’s flower as a token of my sincere gratitude.
Thank you patron, Hematite, please accept this Sowerbaea laxiflora’s flower as a token of my sincere gratitude.
Links to support this translation and access to 8 advanced chapter (Patreon & Kofi)
> Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/LibraryKeyTranslations
> Kofi-Euro: https://ko-fi.com/wanthetranslator
> Kofi-USD: https://ko-fi.com/wanthetranslatorusd
Did you see a mistake? 🐞
Leave a Reply