Dispatches from the Graduate School of Ghost Stories - Chapter 34

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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 (34)
Resignation Vlog (3)
The air in the office felt heavy, each breath a labor.
Kim Jong-sik kept his eyes lowered, avoiding the Chairperson’s icy gaze, when his attention caught on the name plate resting on the desk.
[Chairperson Stork]
On both ends of the elegant black plaque, enormous golden birds were engraved, their wings surrounded by delicate smaller birds in flight, all rendered in meticulous detail.
Kim Jong-sik had no idea what the name meant.
“I won’t ask why you committed arson.”
“I’m terribly sorry…….”
The intern who had made a grave mistake hung his head, thoroughly chastened.
Behind the black-framed glasses, the Chairperson’s sharp gaze bore into him like a blade. She rubbed the reddened skin around her eyes and spoke in a weary voice.
“What I want isn’t a meaningless apology—it’s a solution.”
“I truly am sorry…….”
“Because of you, the fire alarm activated, all employees’ work came to a halt, five security personnel had to leave their posts and work overtime, logistics shipments were delayed, and sorting operations ground to a complete stop. Do you comprehend the scale of damage you’ve inflicted?”
The numbers began calculating in Kim Jong-sik’s mind before grinding to a halt.
The losses were staggering. He couldn’t even understand what grievance he harbored against the company that would drive him to commit something as terrifying as arson.
He knelt before the Chairperson, genuinely remorseful, and begged her forgiveness.
“What can I possibly do to be useful to DNA Logistics? I’m truly a worthless employee. Please, just give me one more chance to prove my value.”
“Ordinary damages compensation won’t resolve this matter. Hmm… You’re not formally employed, but I suppose we can’t call you a complete outsider. Let’s start with this: work without salary or benefits for 120 years until your natural lifespan ends, and then, accounting for inflation and the company’s circumstances, we’ll adjust your workload and add 28 more years of service after that.”
“Yes…! Thank you so much!”
“Of course, should I judge your efforts insufficient, I can add additional service terms. Now, sign the contract and submit it to the Human Resources Team.”
A sheet of paper fluttered down before him.

The terms matched exactly what the Chairperson had stated. If he managed the initial 120 years well, the subsequent 28 years would allow for adjusted workload—it was a remarkably humane arrangement!
He respectfully picked up the cheap ballpoint pen that had been tossed near his hand.
A sharp, throbbing pain shot through his left hand.
He had no luxury for distraction. He needed to sign this excellent contract at once. Yet the undeniable pain forced him to unfold his palm and examine the line running from his wrist across his hand.
Fortunately, his life line hadn’t shortened.
The Prophecy still suggested he had the possibility of realizing the Destiny he had designated for himself.
Destiny…… Prophecy……? Kim Jong-sik frowned at the unfamiliar words. He was someone who could only save his life by graduating from somewhere.
He must have lived all his life to join DNA Logistics—so why was he thinking such things now?
“Kim Jong-sik?”
Suddenly, his hand froze as he was about to write a name that now felt foreign to him.
The name the Chairperson had told him to write wasn’t his real name. Should he correct it?
The man wearing the mask of Kim Jong-sik became aware of something in his pocket and began searching.
A bright yellow orb rolled inside a zipper bag.
Before the figure before him could issue another command, he flicked the orb into his mouth.
“…….”
The fragment of Yeouiju still carried a faint taste of mud. The yellowish gleaming bead melted on his tongue in an instant, disappearing down his throat.
Yoo Jong-hwa felt the heavy air pressing down on him lift.
The pressure to dedicate himself to the company and his inexplicable reverence for the unfamiliar Chairperson dissolved along with the Yeouiju.
In their place came an unnatural clarity about the present moment.
“I would like an explanation regarding what you just consumed.”
The eyes behind the black glasses gleamed.
Yoo Jong-hwa understood well that the being before him was not human. Yet compared to the demon he’d met at the Broadcasting Station before, the Chairperson didn’t exert such crushing pressure. Did even Paranormal Phenomena have ranks?
He steadied himself and answered carefully.
“I received it as a gift too, so I don’t really know…….”
“Find out the source by any means necessary. If you want to lighten Kim Jong-sik’s labor conditions even slightly—”
“Wait, did the company actually suffer damage? The building looks fine to me.”
Yoo Jong-hwa withdrew the hand he’d placed on the unfair contract and scrambled to his feet.
“I apologize for the commotion, but it seems like you’re asking for far too much!”
Generally, when an explorer of Paranormal Phenomena withdrew, things didn’t revert to normal. Yet DNA Logistics had returned to pristine condition almost immediately, even though he hadn’t completely escaped.
Thinking over what the Chairperson had said, she’d only mentioned logistics delays and employee overtime. She made no mention of building damage compensation or the death of the Logistics Warehouse monster, so an unpaid lifetime contract seemed grossly unfair.
Yoo Jong-hwa decided the Chairperson was nothing but a swindler and began challenging her on the injustice.
“That was resolved by the Insurance I prudently secured—it doesn’t mean you did no wrong.”
But the brazen Chairperson delivered an answer that defied common sense.
Insurance existed for Paranormal Phenomena?
He had no idea how Insurance could reconstruct a fire. Then again, there were companies running delivery businesses involving Paranormal Phenomena, so it wasn’t strange that insurance companies existed either.
Yoo Jong-hwa, flustered, quickly fired off another question.
“Will the Insurance get outrageously expensive because of this incident?”
“….”
That didn’t seem to be the case.
She could have lied, but the Chairperson simply chose to hold her tongue.
“Then…! The damage I’ve caused the company really can’t be that great, can it?”
“The law recognizes a crime called attempted arson.”
The Chairperson, needlessly human in her reasoning, replied with cold logic.
In Yoo Jong-hwa’s case, it wasn’t attempted arson but full arson, and while there had been no property damage, his mind lacked the talent for arguing things through coherently.
He switched tactics and began pleading with maximum debasement.
“Chairperson. I have something to tell you. I truly wish to work as a slave, but I’m already a man facing death.”
“You look quite healthy.”
“That’s just how I appear—underneath, I have an illness with a terminal prognosis….”
“I see. If it’s a Prophecy you’re referring to, then it’s not an illness at all.”
Caught completely off guard, Yoo Jong-hwa thrust his palm toward the Chairperson and asked urgently.
“Do you happen to know who made this Prophecy?!”
Finding the identical plastic capsule in the logistics warehouse—the one that had contained the Prophecy—was clearly no coincidence after all.
Perhaps he could even break the Prophecy before finishing graduate school. Yoo Jong-hwa was pleased to have found a thread to pull, but he hesitated to ask about solutions outright, fearing the Chairperson might demand lifetime servitude as the price.
Graduate school seemed more realistic than 148 years of labor.
“One of our company’s clients.”
“Is it…someone I’m permitted to know about?”
A safety rule to follow in paranormal phenomena: don’t try to learn too much.
The Chairperson seemed surprised by his cautious attitude and studied him for a moment. Then she opened her laptop.
The state-of-the-art ultralight notebook bore a brand unfamiliar to Yoo Jong-hwa from outside the paranormal world.
The logo on the laptop’s front showed a winged hat with two serpents coiled around it.
In the brief moment while Yoo Jong-hwa examined the logo, the Chairperson finished her search and reached a conclusion.
“No. Customer information security is paramount.”
“Yes, of course…. Anyway, I need to go back and graduate from school. The moment I lose any possibility of graduating, I die. So hiring me at this company won’t matter much—I’ll be dead soon anyway. You’ll just have a body to dispose of. I’m useless!”
“That’s a reasonable argument.”
The Chairperson granted Yoo Jong-hwa his answer readily, then paused in thought before typing at remarkable speed.
“So…can’t I just leave? I won’t come back here again! I’ll forget everything!”
The Chairperson gave no response to his words.
The bespectacled woman picked up the office phone and dialed an internal extension, calling someone.
“Park Min-gu, intern—are you at your desk?”
[Yes. I am.]
A static-filled, melancholy voice crackled through the receiver.
A familiar name.
The intern from the painting hadn’t disappeared after all.
[Chairperson! What an honor! You’ve finally called for me…! I’ve worked so hard! Please, let me leave…. All the tasks you assigned me, I…!]
“Your performance has been abysmal. Did you think that amount could repay the damage to the company?”
[I apologize. But…!]
“Never mind. How was Kim Jong-sik’s work attitude today?”
[Terrible! He wouldn’t sit still all day, kept breaking into other offices, disrupting other employees’ work, and constantly tried to communicate with people. He didn’t do any of his assigned paperwork!]
“I see. Then he’s not suited for office work.”
[….]
The intern, who had just been pouring curses on Yoo Jong-hwa, suddenly fell silent.
To swap places with Yoo Jong-hwa, he’d need to praise him somehow and sell him to the Chairperson, but he couldn’t seem to make the words “excellent employee” come out of his mouth, even as a lie.
To want termination this badly—Park Min-gu, whom he’d thought was just a simple ghost, seemed to be a slave under lifetime contract much like Yoo Jong-hwa, having committed some grave sin against this company.
[Still….]
“I’ve heard your opinion. Continue with your work.”
The Chairperson cut off the intern’s excuse cleanly and set down the receiver.
She was meticulous, but compared to the paranormal phenomena he’d encountered so far, she was far less frightening and more rational. Now that he’d already proven himself useless, a reasonable negotiation might get him released.
“Chairperson, is there any part-time work available short-term? If it’s something I can do while attending school, I could still be useful to the company.”
“A proactive attitude—I like it. As it happens, we need someone for logistics deliveries.”
Active outdoors without rest, and enjoys communicating with people.
The moment the Chairperson heard Park Min-gu’s assessment of Yoo Jong-hwa, she seemed to have already settled his position in her mind. So she wouldn’t let him go for free after all.
“You’d be perfect as a delivery driver.”
To the Chairperson’s command disguised as a proposal, Yoo Jong-hwa nodded without resistance.
Being stuck in this bleak company might actually be worse than wandering the paranormal phenomena delivering packages. At least he could reach out to his seniors for help.
“Yes, I understand. Where should I make the delivery?”
“What Kim Jong-sik stole is in a region with special delivery charges. The deep parts of Hanok Village have no available staff on our end, so we’ve outsourced those deliveries.”
“Ah, then I’ll handle that delivery!”
Things were working out too smoothly. No matter which path he took, as long as he ended up in Seoul, it was all the same.
He’d have to deliver the package to Hanok Village anyway, so this was exactly what he’d wanted. Yoo Jong-hwa thanked his luck and volunteered to be the delivery driver.

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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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