Dispatches from the Graduate School of Ghost Stories - Chapter 29

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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 (29)
A Day in the Life of an MZ Generation Intern (3)
Yu Jong-hwa received the email and scrutinized the drawing carefully. He couldn’t pinpoint exactly what had changed, but there was unmistakably a different vitality to it than before.
The sender had informed him they were in the 1st Floor Lobby. Yu Jong-hwa waited a moment, wondering if someone might come looking for him, but heard nothing.
Four, or five. Does the order matter? Anyway, I hope you got through this garbage morning without incident alongside those bizarre employees.
Lunch starts sharp at noon. If they ask you to join them, weep and eat the waste-like food with them; if you’re alone, make sure to leave the office to eat. They don’t seem to like the smell of human food much.
If you want to see all the employees vomiting while condemning you, by all means try it~.
Yu Jong-hwa followed the half-hearted instructions in the guide, packed his backpack, and slipped out of the office.
Alone beneath an umbrella, rain pattered softly as he stepped outside. Standing hunched in the corner of the building, slowly chewing a chocolate bar, he suddenly felt how utterly meaningless this single day at the company was.
It was hard to tell whether the desolation he felt now was his own emotion or that of the dead intern. Perhaps because of his temperament, prone to loneliness, he was keenly aware that this Urban Legend Phenomenon was profoundly unsuited to him.
Assimilation into an urban legend is ultimately a matter of the mind. Because of this, he’d heard there were quite a few cases where someone who came through unscathed in a physically dangerous Urban Legend Phenomenon would descend into madness after entering a seemingly peaceful one.
Yu Jong-hwa rummaged through his bag and discovered a Coffee Can with a memo stuck to it. The paper was densely covered in notes written in a very familiar hand.
Seriously, please. I’m begging you. Don’t do anything reckless. Just endure the suffering and come back.
Don’t go anywhere else, and stay in the office until six o’clock. Promise!
The senior’s messages, distrusting as they were of him, felt genuinely warm. He felt a little wronged at being treated like a troublemaker who might blow up at any moment, but he had nothing to say in his defense. If So Hui-young had passed this intern selection instead of him, she would have completed the task far more smoothly.
There were several reasons why So Hui-young hadn’t been selected for this internship, but Yu Jong-hwa suspected it was because she, unable to endure any longer, had written a letter filled with curses and left it on every employee’s desk before escaping.
After the letter incident, she claimed she never received an acceptance email from DNA Logistics. She asserted it this way:
‘I tried to hold back, but he kept changing his instructions eighteen times. Shouldn’t I have just not cursed him to his face about forgetting the work he’d assigned me?’
Since you’re holding back anyway, why not hold back all the way? You couldn’t hold back either, and you still lecture me about it.
With a deep sigh, Yu Jong-hwa stopped resenting So Hui-young and turned his mind to what lay ahead. His phone showed 12:45. DNA Logistics’ regulations set lunch until 1 PM, but every report showed that all employees finished their meal and returned within thirty minutes.
Yu Jong-hwa climbed the stairs toward the 3rd Floor at a brisk pace when he spotted someone dressed differently from the regular staff. A figure wearing a black hat pulled low was dressed as a security guard, the sort you’d commonly see. Since the guard stopped his steps and stood still facing Yu Jong-hwa, Yu Jong-hwa greeted him calmly.
“Hello?”
“…, …….”
“Are you a security guard, perhaps?”
The man in the guard uniform nodded. A few old-fashioned keys were tied to his belt and jingled as he moved. The guard spoke to Yu Jong-hwa in a flat voice.
“Which department are you with?”
“Oh… I’m just an office assistant. An intern.”
“Please show me your Employee ID Card.”
“Sorry? This is my first day at work, so I don’t have an Employee ID Card yet…….”
The guard said nothing for a moment, then abruptly pulled a Whistle from his front pocket and blew it hard. The sound of footsteps hurrying from all corners of the building echoed, and security guards identical in appearance began closing in.
“This is a restricted building. No unauthorized entry. We’ll escort you outside.”
“I’ll leave. I’ll see myself out!”
Incidentally, Kim Jong-mal’s guide was entirely unhelpful in this situation.
The guide author’s supplementary note regarding security guard encounters:
Oh, you got questioned by a security guard?
My apologies. I managed to slip past them smoothly, so I never ran into that! Best of luck! Though honestly, the ending probably won’t be good!
Yu Jong-hwa thought he’d leave and sneak back in when he got the chance, but the guards slowly circled him off, cutting off his escape route. Watching the guards draw their Truncheons, Yu Jong-hwa’s eyes darted.
“Wait… just a moment! Sir! By ‘outside,’ you do mean simply outside the building, correct?”
“Your cooperation is appreciated.”
In most Urban Legend Phenomena, being apprehended by security, management, police, or similar figures never ended well. Best case, you vanished. Worst case, you died. If your luck was truly terrible, you ended up in a fate worse than death. Yu Jong-hwa frowned, torn between failing the investigation and bolting immediately to escape this place.
[DNA Logistics. Currently on the 3rd Floor.]
Ding. At the notification that an email had arrived, Yu Jong-hwa instinctively glanced at his pocket. Even though he hadn’t turned on the screen, his Smartphone blazed with light and forcibly displayed the new email.
Yu Jong-hwa realized that the internet wasn’t connected within this Urban Legend Phenomenon. His Smartphone was in a state where it couldn’t normally receive emails. So this email was not an ordinary message.
He was slowly pushed back by the cluster of guards as he descended the stairs, his fingers quickly searching through his inbox.
“Can I use this instead of an Employee ID Card?”
Yu Jong-hwa showed the recruitment acceptance email to the guard and asked desperately.
Kim Jong-sik, April 23rd, Report to Room 315. The sender was clearly DNA Logistics.
All the guards stopped in unison, then craned their necks outward, concentrating on the Smartphone screen in his hands. Their necks were about twice as long as ordinary people’s. Feeling slight discomfort at this, Yu Jong-hwa stood still while the guards read the content in full.
The guards seemed to have decided there was no problem with his identity. Before long, they all bowed their heads respectfully and offered apologies in polite voices.
“We apologize for the trouble. We’ll open Room 315 for you.”
“No, it’s fine. I don’t need to work from that office specifically!”
“Employees must work from their assigned offices. We’ll open Room 315 for you.”
“……Yes.”
The summoned guards withdrew, leaving only one to escort him to the 3rd Floor. Since they all wore identical uniforms and looked identical, Yu Jong-hwa couldn’t tell whether this was the same guard he’d first encountered.
Click-click, creak. As the guard inserted the key and turned the doorknob, an unpleasant sound rang out—it seemed the lock hadn’t been used in a very long time. Only after pulling the door open with a splintering sound, as though nearly wrenching it off, did Room 315’s door swing open. The guard gestured toward the open doorway.
“Thank you!”
Though he absolutely didn’t want to enter, the guard was standing firmly beside him, making it impossible to refuse. Yu Jong-hwa bowed to the guard and closed the office door.
Room 315, abandoned for a long time, was a dark space reeking of mustiness.
Yu Jong-hwa felt along the wall with his hand and flipped the light switch. Fortunately, common sense still applied here; the light came on without any unusual phenomena.
It was a cramped space boxed in on all sides by white walls, with no windows. A desk sat alone in the middle of the room, covered in dust. An old-fashioned Laptop sat atop the desk, thick with dust.
Of course, Yu Jong-hwa had no desire to touch anything in this room.
The phrase “a place most people have never visited” might sound appealing, but in the context of an Urban Legend Phenomenon, it meant something to be avoided at all costs. In such phenomena, the chances of finding treasure or gold were virtually nonexistent—and places without information only awaited explorers with peculiar, terrible deaths.
Yu Jong-hwa cautiously opened the office door and confirmed that the Security Guard had vanished from the hallway. He didn’t want to return to the Management Support Department, but even emotional hardship felt preferable to a place this ominous.
The moment he resolved to leave and stepped toward the door, a sheaf of documents that had been abandoned on the floor caught his foot with a soft tap.
The envelope wasn’t sealed, and papers scattered loose across the floor, spreading in all directions.
It occurred to him that leaving without cleaning up the mess he’d caused might invite trouble. Yu Jong-hwa picked up the papers and examined their contents.

Something like this should be left on a desk. Whoever had used this office before seemed remarkably inconsiderate.
The documents inside the envelope appeared to be a hastily copied form, with only a few lines describing duties to be performed.
A list of simple labor tasks assigned by others, websites for ordering items employees used privately, descriptions of superiors’ personalities and the types of errands they gave out—nothing that qualified as real “work” filled the page.
“Selecting a Korean medicine clinic for the director’s mother? Summarizing pros and cons within three pages and submitting…… I’d quit before doing this.”
Yu Jong-hwa clicked his tongue and stopped reading the handover document. The very last page contained something that almost resembled actual work, but he’d already lost interest—he gathered the papers and shoved them aside on the desk.
[This is DNA Logistics. Room 315.]
A notification chimed on his smartphone. The moment Yu Jong-hwa checked the message content, he jerked his head up and glanced around. No one. No one had knocked on the door.
He realized the drawing attached to the email depicted a scene he knew all too well—it showed the office of Room 315 as viewed from outside, peering in.
The man in the drawing, noticeably sharper than before, wore an expression of anger beneath a face covered in jagged, violent scribbles.
Yu Jong-hwa noticed that the Handover Document envelope he’d set down had been newly drawn on the desk in the image. Reality was being reflected in real time in the sketch.
“I… I didn’t come in because I wanted to. I’m leaving right now!”
As if ignoring his words, a faint vibration sounded from the laptop on the desk. The screen of the old machine lit up brightly. Yu Jong-hwa could see the outbox of an email account that had auto-login enabled.
[This is DNA Logistics.]
[This is DNA Logistics.]
[This is DNA Logistics.]
[This is DNA Logistics.]
…….
New emails were being generated in real time above the subject lines he recognized.
[This is DNA Logistics. Room 315 has arrived at work.]
[This is DNA Logistics. Room 315 is beginning work.]
[This is DNA Logistics. Room 315 is already an assigned desk.]
[This is DNA Logistics. Room 315 is already an assigned desk.]
[This is DNA Logistics. Room 315 is already an assigned desk.]
Ding. Ding. Notifications of incoming mail began ringing endlessly from Yu Jong-hwa’s smartphone.

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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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