Dispatches from the Graduate School of Ghost Stories - Chapter 32

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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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Anomalies and Graduate School (32)
Live-Broadcast Resignation Vlog (1)
Why had Yu Jong-hwa come this far?
Only the threat of death. He knew that if he didn’t graduate from the program, the Prophecy left unrealized would kill him.
He moved his left hand, its lifeline shortened by a single word. Where had the Prophecy come from? The black envelope, torn at the corner, crackled in his grip.
The front bore no recipient’s name, only the sender’s scrawled hastily across a cheap sticker.
[■■■■■■ ■■ ■■]
Yu Jong-hwa’s eyes swept quickly over the garbled characters he couldn’t read.
A stinging pain bloomed behind his eyes as a few letters forced themselves into focus. Perhaps they weren’t letters at all—merely shapes his mind had instantly parsed into meaning.
[(Co.) ■■■■ Division ■ Original ■]
“Gah—!”
The price for those few seconds was steep. Strong hands seized him by the nape, lifting him high before slamming him down hard against the floor.
The impact knocked the wind from his lungs.
His cold-stiffened body screamed with a dull, throbbing ache. He mechanically checked his ankles for injury.
His head had been protected in the fall, his arms only bruised. Grateful that his body could still move, Yu Jong-hwa shoved a few capsules and the black envelope haphazardly into his backpack. They might have nothing to do with the Prophecy, but he could sort that out later. First he needed to escape this place—if he could.
The warehouse temperature had dropped below freezing. His thin suit offered no protection against the cold; his hands and feet had gone numb and stiff, making movement difficult.
In the end, Yu Jong-hwa couldn’t run far. The creature seized his legs, throwing him flat against the ground.
The creature didn’t immediately tear him apart. Instead, it dragged the freezing human across the floor, tidied the scattered merchandise, and cleaned up the mess around it.
No matter how hard he struggled, he couldn’t escape its grip—a strength that threatened to snap his ankles. Trembling with fear and cold, Yu Jong-hwa spoke in hollow desperation.
“You prefer your meat frozen? I have a few cans of tuna, actually. Ha ha… hah……”
His breath misted and dispersed into the void. When he’d fallen, his palms had scraped the ground; broken capsule fragments were embedded in the wounds, blood oozing and then freezing.
At this rate, freezing to death would come before being eaten. Yu Jong-hwa forced his unresponsive hands to rummage through his backpack.
Ring, ring-ring. Even at this temperature, his smartphone chimed dutifully. Despite being wrapped in a towel, the ghost was apparently so spiteful with its emails that the notifications were loud enough to hear through the backpack itself. This incessant sound probably contributed to his being dragged along now.
A kitchen knife fell into his nearly senseless hands.
He forced his upper body forward and brought the blade down hard on the creature’s arm where it gripped his ankle. But the knife only snapped in two without properly piercing its skin, the halves clattering to the frost-covered ground.
The attack failed, but it did succeed in enraging the creature.
“……, ……”
“S-s-senior Jong-ho! Please help me!!”
Yu Jong-hwa bitterly regretted not taking the earring as the creature, licking its lips, raked its claws across his left arm. The wound was shallow but sharp pain shot through the limb. He was nearly crying as he yanked out whatever came to hand and hurled it at the creature, until finally he drew out a heavy weapon and aimed it at the thing’s face.
“Shrieeeeeek! Aaaaaah! Aaaaaaaagh!”
The flamethrower that So Hui-young had modified unleashed tremendous firepower at a single pull of the trigger. As it shrieked and thrashed with severe burns across its face, Yu Jong-hwa kicked at the creature’s arm with the heel of his shoe, wrenching free.
The creature’s joint snapped under the precise blow. With a sound like scraping metal, it released him and writhed toward a shelf, wrapping its face in its arms. Boxes tumbled to the ground in a cascade.
Yu Jong-hwa thought the warehouse temperature had risen slightly. Whether it was simply from the flamethrower’s heat or from the creature dying—he couldn’t say.
Now he had to choose.
Should he flee, avoiding the wounded creature until he found the exit? Or should he overcome the crisis through a more… “fundamental” method?

Author: Kim Jong-mal
Do Anomaly Phenomena follow trends so desperately? Or do they simply have such rotten dispositions that they want to torment you in every possible way?
Either way. If you find yourself caught in an Anomaly Phenomenon with unusual activity, remember this advice.
Anomaly Phenomena always Return to Original State!
Burn them, explode them, drown them, bury them—the next researcher who visits will find them whole once more.
(Underline this! A hundred asterisks!) Survival always depends on boldness!!
No matter what you do to an Anomaly Phenomenon, it can’t sue you. Anomaly Phenomena don’t have legal protection under Korean law~.
Remember: we have a last resort. Salt and fire.
I’ve survived 108 Anomaly Phenomena using this method…..
*However, do not entangle yourself with Special Entities that affect reality. They will remember you forever.
*Anomaly Phenomena that have naturally expired do not Return to Original State!
The creature, one hand pressed to its melted face, was searching for him.
In the sounds it made now, there was no trace of Korean, but even with a different language, one could tell it meant more than mere killing or eating. If it caught him, death would be anything but merciful.
Yu Jong-hwa rolled his body behind the collapsed shelving and pressed himself flat against the ground. Panicking, he thrashed through his backpack and several 1.8-liter bottles of vegetable oil tumbled out with a bang—the oil So Hui-young had used when making pancakes in the Music Room. Heavy bags of sea salt, carefully packed by the seniors, clattered down as well.
Oil. Salt.
The seniors must have been hoping for him to use the last resort after all.
He dashed about, gathering fallen boxes and scattering them around the now-blind creature. Yu Jong-hwa poured every kind of oil So Hui-young had packed—vegetable, olive, gasoline—onto the boxes and threw fistfuls of salt recklessly in all directions.
The greasy smell of oil hung thick in the air.
“Kim Jong-mal sure knows all sorts of things. He said a small flame like a lighter can’t create a real inferno.”
I don’t care. Resigned to his fate, he hurled an empty commercial-grade oil drum at the creature’s head.
“But a flamethrower would be a real inferno, wouldn’t it?”
The creature’s answer was unnecessary. The moment Yu Jong-hwa unleashed the flame across the oil-soaked boxes, fire spread with terrifying speed.
As infant manufacturing kits burned, countless screams echoed through the space.
He staggered toward the far end of the endless warehouse and ran hard. He was warm now.

He tuned out the announcement, which had escalated from the department head to the chairman himself. Reaching into his bag, he withdrew his smartphone.
Yu Jong-hwa, collapsed at a distance where the flames were barely visible, turned his predicament over in his mind slowly. Honestly, he was too exhausted to think straight anymore.
A monster guarding packages? Solved.
The company’s warning? He hadn’t managed to resolve that yet. But once he escaped this Anomaly Phenomenon completely, it wouldn’t be able to follow him.
The Dead Intern’s curse? Yu Jong-hwa picked up his smartphone, which had been ringing relentlessly. He unwound the towel he’d wrapped around it and switched on the screen.
Let’s handle this quickly and get home.
[Die, die, die, switch with me, please, die]
This ghost seemed like it would chase him even if he escaped the Anomaly Phenomenon. Yu Jong-hwa sighed and rummaged through the backpack.
So Hui-young had packed the most absurd assortment of items into that backpack. What on earth did they need a selfie stick for in an Anomaly Phenomenon?
Yet to Yu Jong-hwa in his current state, it felt like just the thing.
He fastened his smartphone to the selfie stick and offered a greeting in an exhausted voice.
Twisted and contorted, the crude scrawl of a man on the screen thrashed about ceaselessly, shrieking without pause.
“Yes, hello. I was nearly dead anyway. I don’t know what your problem is, but couldn’t you just let me go?”
[DNA Logistics. Welcome to the company. We hope you work in Room 315 for all eternity.]
“Listen. I’m suffering too. I’m in graduate school. You don’t need to tell me to die—I’ll fail and die anyway if I can’t graduate. I’m already cursed, you know? I don’t need any more curses piled on top of it…….”
Die, die, die. The Dead Intern cursed him indiscriminately, telling him to rot away in the company just as it had.
Apparently, now that a stupid human had set foot in its office, it didn’t want to miss this opportunity.
Having already committed arson, Yu Jong-hwa felt no fear now—only exhaustion and irritation. Perhaps he’d been out of his mind since the moment he clocked in.
What was wrong with this insane company, so desperate to kill a single new hire?
“I’ve given it thought. How can we resolve your resentment while I survive this? There’s a mad beast chasing me, the company already has its eye on me. What is the root cause of all these problems?”
He held the selfie stick high, pointing it toward the burning boxes and the monster in the distance.
The alarm ringing from the smartphone fell silent for a moment.
“Please trust me. I know how to solve this.”
He’d already committed a major crime anyway, and committing one more wouldn’t change anything. With an adrenaline-soaked mind, he thought only of getting out safely.
And so he reached a perfect conclusion: if this damned company just disappeared, everyone could be happy.
To strengthen his persuasiveness, Yu Jong-hwa brandished the flamethrower toward the ghost in his smartphone and shouted.
“I’ll definitely get you to resign! Shouldn’t I just burn down the office? Tell me the way! If the company disappears, that’s a resignation!”
Before the ghost could even respond, a resounding announcement shook the Warehouse.
<>
This announcement did not repeat like before—it ended cleanly after a single broadcast.
The sprinklers in the Warehouse ceiling suddenly activated, pouring water down.
Soaked head to toe in cold water, Yu Jong-hwa surveyed his surroundings. Burnt debris and dust swirled in the water, flowing somewhere unseen. He walked, following the current.
The overhead lights began to flicker, and as the space alternated between darkness and brightness, the Warehouse no longer seemed as expansive as before.
He found the Warehouse entrance without difficulty at the end of the water’s flow.
Opening the door, cool night air rushed in.
Yu Jong-hwa turned back, holding the selfie stick high to show the ghost the ruined Warehouse.
“Are you satisfied?”
The ghost, which had fallen silent for a moment, erupted into a barrage of crimson-lettered messages, tearing into him.
You’ve caused great harm to the company—you must stay here forever. The chairman won’t let this slide. You’re even lower than me; this place suits you better. Nothing but the malicious words of a petty spirit.
Yu Jong-hwa discerned the fear that dwelt in the ghost amid those words, but he could neither understand the reason for that emotion nor did he wish to.
He would simply leave this place and sever ties with DNA Logistics for good.
“Yes. I suppose burning down the Office Building is the best course then? I understand perfectly.”
From this moment on, I’m starting a Live-Broadcast Resignation Vlog.
Yu Jong-hwa raised the selfie stick like a spear and headed solemnly toward the Office Building.

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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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