1440 - Chapter 38

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Episode 38
Her mind felt foggy from lack of proper sleep. She was stretching her arms overhead to shake off the drowsiness when it happened.
“Huh?”
Whiiing— A biting cold wind swept across the open space from all directions, sharp enough to raise goosebumps on her skin. Why was there cold air in the office? Had she left the air conditioning on while she slept?
37
Ja Yoon’s eyes snapped fully open as she processed this thought, and she looked around in confusion. Then her mouth fell slack.
“…My God.”
The place where she’d awakened was not her cramped one-room apartment. It was open on all sides—the middle of a mountainside. And on either side of her rose two burial mounds, their earth packed smooth and neat.
What is this? What in the world is happening?
Ja Yoon hurriedly patted down her surroundings until she found her mobile phone. Thankfully, she was still wearing the clothes she’d had on when she left work, and she managed to pull the phone from her pocket.
But it showed no service. There were still places in South Korea with no signal? It seemed she was deep in the remote countryside, far up in the mountains.
The moment Ja Yoon woke, she accepted the reality: this was no dream. No dream could feel this vivid, this tangible.
For someone known as ruthlessly rational—AI, some called her—it was impossible to muster any hopeful thought like “I need to wake up from this dream.”
Setting aside her useless phone, she rose to her feet and began doing what she could. First, she adjusted her clothes to conserve body heat, then gathered fallen leaves. She’d use the piles to retain warmth.
As she pulled dead leaves over her lower body, her mind worked through what had happened.
She’d definitely come home, set her bag down on the table, and carefully checked for any signs of forced entry. Only then had she refilled the cat’s food dish.
The habit of checking whether someone had broken in had developed after she joined the Fraud Investigation Task Force.
The so-called Big Players—whether their power lay in wealth or influence, or both—were all uniformly comfortable trampling on others.
They’d enter your home without permission and deliberately leave traces of their visit to intimidate you. In her early days, Hong Ja Yoon had panicked, moved apartments, fled to her family home. But now she was a veteran of such tactics. She’d endured them countless times.
Without the spine to actually kill her, they were reduced to these crude pranks, which only made her tired.
Ja Yoon looked down at her right arm, still wrapped in a cast. It was an injury from a car accident not long ago.
The thought of it made her teeth clench. It had to be Cha Ji Hee’s work. She’d make sure to find proof and make him pay for it.
Once she’d thought that far, the present situation clicked into place. This had to be a kidnapping.
At least there was no violence—her body was intact. Her hands and feet were free, and she wasn’t locked in anywhere. Though she was trapped on a mountainside with no idea where it was or how far she’d come…but still.
As long as she didn’t die of hypothermia on this mountain, she’d take every measure available once she got down. She’d hire people of her own to threaten those bastards,
“Ow!”
Her throat suddenly pricked with pain. Startled, Ja Yoon wrapped her uninjured hand around her neck and looked down in alarm.
She felt something against her throat. A rough, rope-like thing, thick and wound tight around her neck—something that hadn’t been there moments before. But looking down would never let her see her own throat.
She felt along it with her fingers. The rope led backward and wrapped around the tree she was leaning against.
“What the—who’s there?! If this is a joke, I swear—ugh!”
As she shouted and tried to turn around, the rope suddenly pulled taut. Her back slammed hard against the tree, and her throat clenched violently.
“Ack, cough, cough, huh…”
Panicked, Ja Yoon clawed at the invisible rope. Her legs, buried in leaves, thrashed and scattered the dry foliage everywhere.
Her breath was strangled. Her throat convulsed, threatening to eject itself from her mouth. Her chest heaved with the desperate demand for air, but none would come.
Just as pressure threatened to burst her eyes from their sockets, her hands weakened. The rope slipped from her failing grip.
Was she dying? The thought barely registered before consciousness began to slip away.
“Huh, huh!”
Suddenly, her throat released. Ja Yoon collapsed forward, curling into herself. She wanted to cough but couldn’t manage it. She gasped and wheezed, her hand reaching behind her to feel the tree. But there was nothing—no rope, no trace it had ever been wound there.
“What—what? Huk. Ah…”
Tears and snot streaming down her face, she turned to look behind her. Still no rope.
What was this? A hallucination? A drug-induced vision? But her throat had actually been choked—that part was real.
She touched her neck with trembling fingers and felt raw scrapes, thick red marks where something had scraped her skin raw. Beyond the soreness of being strangled came a stinging pain. When she examined her palm, blood came away on her fingers.
Skin torn enough to bleed meant the choking had been real.
“Ah!”
Ja Yoon bolted upright. Despite every rule about not moving around the mountain at night, she tore away from that spot.
Was someone chasing her? What if the rope caught her throat again?
Driven by panic, she ran until her breath gave out and she had to stop. She grabbed at whatever branches touched her arms and leaned against them, gasping. Her eyes kept trying to close, and she forced them open and shut again. In her crouch, she could see the ground.
The leaves she’d gathered, now scattered by her thrashing. And there—her mobile phone, the one she’d set down and forgotten. She was back where she’d started.
“I’m—I’m losing it. I’m losing my mind!”
Ja Yoon jerked her hand away from the burial mound she’d been leaning on. Her stomach threatened to heave, but she ran again. She had to run.
This time straight down. Not sideways, not in any direction but downward—she’d roll down the slope if she had to, anything to avoid circling back to that spot.
She tore down the incline and stopped, breathing hard. This time she was certain she’d run properly downhill. There was no way, absolutely no way, she could end up back at that same place.
But when she opened her eyes, the scattered leaves and her mobile phone were there again.
“Ahhhhhhhhh!”
It was rare for Ja Yoon to scream at anything. But now it wasn’t just fear—it was the suffocating realization that she was trapped, running in circles like a hamster in a wheel. The impossible made manifest, crushing any grip on sanity she had left.
Why? Why am I here? Why can’t I leave?
She could no longer think rationally. She wanted nothing more than to flee these burial mounds when, suddenly—Whoosh!—both her arms were yanked backward. It felt as though someone had seized her by the wrists and was dragging her with force.
Before she could resist, her body was being pulled backward through the dirt.
“No, no! No! Let go, let me go!”
She drove her heels down desperately, but it made no difference. Rough earth, twigs, and leaves caught on her legs and feet, scraping and tearing.
“Let go! Let it go, ugh, let it go!”
Though she thrashed and begged him to release her, the force dragging her forward suddenly dropped her. Then it forced her down into a crawling position, face pressed to the earth. Someone was still controlling her—she could feel it. Her arms and legs moved of their own accord, obeying a will that was not her own.
Ja Yoon clawed at the ground, scraping away dirt and soil without her consent. Twigs lodged beneath her fingernails; her fingertips split and bled, yet she couldn’t stop digging.
She was weeping. Sobbing, gasping. Snot streamed from her nose, choking off her breath, and she sucked in harsh, trembling gulps of muddy air through her mouth—but the tears would not stop.
Between two mounds she dug. The grave-shaped earth stretched before her, a space just large enough for a single coffin, and still her hands tore at the soil.
Her arms felt as though they might tear from their sockets. Pain screamed through her, exhaustion dragged at every fiber, yet her body refused to rest—it only dug deeper.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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