Dispatches from the Graduate School of Ghost Stories - Chapter 11

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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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Urban Legends and Graduate School Presents (11)
How to Outrun Death
So Hwi-yeong was supposed to arrive soon, but it turned out he’d been just around the corner when he called. Before Yu Jong-hwa could prepare for anything, the Laboratory door swung open.
“So you’re the new person? Still have a pulse, I see?!”
A booming male voice echoed through the spacious Laboratory with such force it seemed to vibrate off the walls. His vocal cords, honed through Diaphragmatic Breathing, enunciated so cleanly that each word felt like a direct hit to the brain.
“Hello! I’m the newcomer! Very much alive!”
Yu Jong-hwa raised his own voice in response and folded his waist at a right angle in a bow.
“Yes, hello. I’ve just come back from somewhere rather rough.”
Yu Jong-hwa straightened up again to meet the new person’s gaze. But he didn’t have to raise his head nearly as much as he’d expected.
Standing before him was a man utterly unlike his imagination—small of frame, with delicate features.
“I’m So Hwi-yeong. Did Lee Ju-ho introduce me?”
“Yes, she said you know a lot about Paranormal Phenomena……”
“Me? I’m not so sure. Nothing to get excited about, really. But I suppose it can’t be helped. Let me take a look at what I brought.”
“Thank you so much……!”
“By the way. How old are you?”
“Twenty-eight. Oh, not by Western reckoning. Korean age.”
“Ah, well then. I’ll drop the formality. I’m your senior.”
“Yes?! Okay……!”
“Lee Ju-ho is the same age as me too.”
Hwi-yeong announced the shift to casual speech without a moment’s deliberation. Yu Jong-hwa didn’t look older at all, but if his senior said so, then that was how it was. He quickly resolved to accept it and call him by his senior status.
The new senior took hold of the sealed metal box containing the Contract from him.
“Oof, this is heavy.”
Hwi-yeong mumbled gruffly and passed the box to Lee Ju-ho. She naturally opened it in his stead. Hwi-yeong glanced inside the box, then jerked his head away as if he’d glimpsed something filthy.
“I think I’m going to be sick. Ju-ho, can you clean this up?”
“……You okay? Want to go to the bathroom for a minute?”
“Ugh, where did they dig this thing up from?”
It seemed like excessive fussiness, but So Hwi-yeong’s complexion really did look terrible. Yu Jong-hwa tried to close the box back up, but then a pale hand suddenly swatted the back of his hand, and he let out a yelp.
“Just stay put for a moment.”
“Oh, I was just trying to help……”
Ignoring his protest, So Hwi-yeong unzipped the Backpack he’d been carrying and began dumping out its contents in a heap. All manner of odds and ends tumbled out—and Yu Jong-hwa couldn’t fathom how all of it had possibly fit inside such a small Backpack.
So Hwi-yeong selected a large plastic container and held it up.
“Um, brother. What is that?”
“Obviously Salt.”
“Why…… do you throw Salt?”
“You don’t know the basics? Across all times and places, you always throw Salt at anything wicked.”
“They say you’re supposed to sprinkle Salt after you come back from a funeral.”
Yu Jong-hwa had thought So Hwi-yeong was talking nonsense, but when Lee Ju-ho chimed in too, he began to believe it. Now that he thought about it, he’d heard that Salt drives away ghosts.
But weren’t ghosts and Paranormal Stories different things?
“Does that work on Paranormal Phenomena too……?”
“After all, it’s still a ‘Paranormal Story.’ Since it’s something people created, the superstitions people believe in should work on it.”
“That makes sense.”
These people had more experience than him—he just had to trust them.
So Hwi-yeong dumped the Salt into the box, and the white sea Salt turned pitch black and dissolved the instant it touched the Contract. Yu Jong-hwa heard Hwi-yeong click his tongue.
So Hwi-yeong pulled out a large pair of Tongs from his Backpack and used them to pick up the Contract. He tapped the shoulder of a researcher sitting nearby to get her attention.
“Researcher. Could you burn this for us?”
“At what power level?”
“Maximum output.”
One minute later. Yu Jong-hwa stood with his seniors in front of a machine that looked like a giant oven. The suspicious Contract received from the demon sat alone inside the oven, waiting to be incinerated.
There were quite a few onlookers gathered around them, and they’d all come equipped with Safety Glasses worn neatly on their faces. Even So Hwi-yeong had pulled out Safety Glasses from his Backpack and was watching the experimental machine with them on.
“Senior Lee Ju-ho. Don’t you need to wear Safety Glasses?”
“No. That thing isn’t always a good thing to use.”
“Really? I kind of like how it keeps you from seeing the ugly stuff.”
“There are some things you can only understand by looking at them directly.”
Senior Lee Ju-ho uttered something cryptic before falling silent. Yu Jong-hwa recalled the human dissection performance he’d seen at the Broadcasting Station and shook his head to clear the thought. It was better not to know such things.
“I’ll wear them. Could I get some Safety Glasses?”
“Coming right up. One, two, three.”
“Fire!”
The researchers cheered the ignition in unison. Were they all just bored? Yu Jong-hwa found himself thinking that this Laboratory was quite empty indeed.
Yu Jong-hwa hadn’t managed to put on the Safety Glasses, but nothing happened anyway, so it was fine.
Truly nothing happened at all.
The paper did not burn. There was not even a trace of soot.
In the end, the Contract returned to Yu Jong-hwa’s arms completely intact.
“We threw salt on it, burned it. We’ve done everything we can.”
“So what do we do now?”
So Hwi-yeong picked up the Contract with the tongs and handed it back to Yu Jong-hwa. The researchers who had been watching them scattered from Yu Jong-hwa’s vicinity like roaches encountering a human.
“You’d better live a clean life from now on. You never know when you might end up in the Afterlife.”
“Am I going to die?!”
“Not right away, at least. So let’s try to find a way as quickly as possible. I’ll help.”
“Don’t worry too much. There are a few places we can get help from.”
“Right, there are other methods we can use with Paranormal Stories. For now… don’t open that thing for a while.”
While Lee Ju-ho was comforting him, So Hwi-yeong put the Contract back in the box, pulled Tape from his Backpack, and wrapped it up thoroughly. He even plastered it with “Handle with Care” stickers he’d gotten from somewhere.
“You carry around things like that……?”
“Well, it comes in handy sometimes.”
His thin, small Backpack had been spilling out an endless stream of items ever since.
Nothing short of a blue robot cat’s pocket would make it possible by modern physics.
“What’s that Backpack?”
“Our lifeline and the Laboratory’s treasure number one.”
When asked about its identity, a strange answer came back.
“I prefer my Earrings. If your body is healthy, anything can be solved.”
Lee Ju-ho, who had been quiet, suddenly cut into the conversation and guided them out of the Laboratory.
To avoid disrupting the unfortunate graduate students’ graduation, they slipped out quietly through the door.
“That’s right. I think preparedness is the most important thing. To survive a Paranormal Phenomenon, no matter how many items you gather, it’s never enough.”
Yu Jong-hwa thought everything his seniors said was correct. His own belief was that ‘if you have the will to survive, you can manage somehow’—but in the end, the one who survives until the very last is always the most tenacious.
The two seniors bickered a bit, but eventually Lee Ju-ho gave in easily. Whenever the two argued, it always seemed to be Ju-ho who lost.
“That bag really is important. With just that, we could go without food for a month.”
So Hwi-yeong proudly began pulling out various snacks and items from the bag to show.
“You never know what might happen. I was anxious, so I packed all kinds of things. Food, water, a gas burner too, tools and clothes, a tent and a sleeping bag. And…….”
“All of that fits in there? Isn’t it heavy?”
“Once it’s in the bag, the weight hardly registers. Pretty amazing, right?”
“Wow. That’s great. Where did you get it?”
“Well. There’s a long story behind that…… For now, only someone with ‘So’ in their name can open it. That’s its only drawback.”
“So? What kind of So? The sound a cow makes? Do I need to raise a cow?”
“Having ‘So’ in your name works too.”
“So I can’t open it, and only Hwi-yeong can.”
That’s how ‘So’ Hwi-yeong got to keep the Backpack. Good grief. Does that even make sense as a setting?
“Anyway, pretty much everything fits in it. If you need anything before going into a Paranormal Phenomenon, bring it by.”
“Are we going into another Paranormal Phenomenon?”
“Professor Song does assign work pretty arbitrarily…… but I doubt she’d tell you to go in right away. Probably…… maybe next month?”
Yu Jong-hwa brought out a question he had kept buried deep in his heart.
“Is it impossible to change advisors?”
“Well. At least not this year. And the faculty at our school isn’t great……..”
So Hwi-yeong trailed off awkwardly, and Lee Ju-ho also intervened on behalf of Professor Song, cautioning Yu Jong-hwa.
“Professor Song does let people graduate.”
“Are there even professors who don’t let people graduate?!”
“What are you saying? Cheap, convenient labor like this is worth squeezing for as long as possible. So don’t run away. Other labs are worse.”
Their faces were so serious they didn’t look like they were lying at all.
When graduate students gather, what do they do?
Usually they gossip about their professors.
“I’m not planning to run away anyway. I have to graduate. But I wasn’t confident about writing a thesis, so I was thinking of working as support staff for Paranormal Phenomenon research at the lab…….”
“Ah, I get it. I get it.”
“Right.”
The three nodded together and stared blankly at their watches.
This was bad. All three people gathered here were not intellectuals. When everyone investigating Paranormal Phenomena was far removed from scholarship, that was a red flag.
Shouldn’t at least one out of the three be bright to strike a balance?
So Hwi-yeong sighed and comforted him.
“Jong-hwa, I wouldn’t be surprised if you tore up the Contract and left right now. Who sends someone to a place where they might die on their first day? And alone at that.”
“So it really wasn’t normal…….”
“It was excessive.”
Sure enough, the FSBC Broadcasting Station was a Paranormal Phenomenon of abnormal difficulty. Typically, newcomers don’t enter an anomaly that changes variably like this.
You’re supposed to go in only after you’ve at least been sent on one or two Paranormal Phenomenon surveys assigned by the government……..
Within Yu Jong-hwa, resentment toward the professor only deepened.
“All right, we don’t have much time before the end of the workday. Let’s head to the Laboratory and get to it.”
“Right. You said once we come back from the Paranormal Phenomenon, we need to write a report. I still don’t know how to do it.”
“We have reports from before that we wrote. Just look at one and copy it.”
The seniors insisted it was hardly difficult work.
About an hour had passed when Yu Jong-hwa showed So Hwi-yeong the report he’d painstakingly copied from his seniors’ earlier records.
Hwi-yeong stared at the screen, then looked back at Yu Jong-hwa with an expression of shock.
He then gestured for Lee Ju-ho to come over.
“Ju-ho, come here. I found someone in worse shape than you.”
“Really?”
“Completely sloppy.”
Although So Hwi-yeong’s writing was at a beginner’s level, the report was complete.
Yu Jong-hwa sent the document with a photograph of himself and the demon taken together to Jeon Si-hyeon, then waited for quitting time alongside his seniors, sharing bread amicably.
“Why’d you buy so much?”
“To give to the professor. He’s helped us so much, after all.”
As he tidied the table strewn with breadcrumbs, he suddenly felt uneasy and turned to Hwi-yeong with a question.
“Things will be peaceful for a while, won’t they?”
“It should be. You’ll adjust while you learn the work gradually.”
“Right? No matter how unlucky I am, ha ha.”
* * *
[I’m sorry—I managed to pass along the items you had me get last time, but now we need some additional materials.]
Exactly two weeks later.
Yu Jong-hwa, hand in hand with his seniors, was deployed into a Paranormal Phenomenon.

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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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