Got Dropped into a Ghost Story, Still Gotta Work - Chapter 233

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Even If I Fall Into a Ghost Story, I Still Have to Go to Work Episode 233

The one waiting for me in front of the elevator.

New employee Kim Heo-woon.

“Employee?”

I cannot distinguish people’s faces.

They look like melted mosaics, and their voices are as difficult to discern as old radio recordings.

Therefore, I cannot tell how much this ‘new employee Kim Heo-woon’ standing in front of the elevator resembles the Jang Heo-un I knew… but I can be certain of one thing.

‘…This is a strange situation.’

This is strange.

And someone who knows this better than I do is standing next to me.

The director of this company.

“Hello. You must be the new employee for the Field Investigation Team.”

“Ah. Yes…! My name is Kim Heo-woon.”

“I see. …But how did you get in here?”

“…Excuse me?”

“Heo-un, you’re with the Field Investigation Team, right? Then you shouldn’t be able to enter this Security Team area arbitrarily… I was wondering how you came to be here.”

Silence.

“And how did you find this elevator? How did you know that this employee would be here,”

Ho Yu-won pointed at me.

“How did you know that?”

“…”

His mouth opens.

“I used mimicry.”

…What?

“I mimicked the Security Team to get in, and mimicked the Research Team to find out where the employee was located.”

‘Mimicry…?’

The moment I get an ominous feeling.

A smile spreads across Kim Heo-woon’s invisible face.

“But I’ve already achieved my purpose for joining the company with this, so it’s fine if I get fired for this.”

And he looks at me.

“Employee.”

Purpose for joining.

-There’s something I need to find.

It was me.

“You don’t need to worry. I didn’t cause any disturbance. I just came to find an opportunity to properly introduce myself… I wanted to express my gratitude.”

And Kim Heo-woon bowed his head deeply to me.

“Thank you for saving us. Thanks to you, all the people at the facility came back to life.”

…

Wait a minute.

“Because Jang Heo-un’s wish was fulfilled thanks to you, employee.”

What that means is…

“Ah. Unfortunately, it seems my guess was wrong. Noru.”

I realized.

The fact that both bottles of wish scrolls delivered to Go Young-eun were used…

‘She didn’t use the wish scroll to save Jang Heo-un…!’

In the first place, the probability that such a smart and calm person would suddenly make a careless wish to a wish scroll was low. If anything…

‘She would have been more anxious about continuing to have the wish scroll in her possession.’

Because someone might catch her and take it away.

Moreover, she might have heard that while the Disaster Management Bureau was doing their best to improve Jang Heo-un’s condition, they didn’t know when he would fully recover.

Then it would make more sense that she used one bottle on behalf of Jang Heo-un before something unfortunate happened while holding onto the wish scrolls indefinitely.

She would entrust his recovery from contamination to the Disaster Management Bureau since there were precedents like the Security Team.

Instead, she would have made a real wish.

Like this.

Please grant Jang Heo-un’s wish.

And Jang Heo-un’s wish was…

-He tried to save his precious family.

…

I saw Jang Heo-un’s fulfilled wish before my eyes.

One of his family members, named Kim Heo-woon.

The people from a religious social welfare facility in the provinces where the orphaned Jang Heo-un grew up, which had been completely destroyed by fire.

[This is an interesting situation. Friend.]

[Moreover. How does that person know that friend handed over the wish scroll?]

[And doesn’t the rather vague explanation of the skill called ‘mimicry’ bother you?]

…That.

‘There’s something… I can guess.’

The ominousness creeping up my spine tells me. A single hypothesis that struck my mind like a shock.

…I narrow it down with questions.

Question: Relationship with Jang Heo-un

“Ah. We’re family who grew up in the same facility. Seven out of eight people all died in the fire though.”

Question: Reason for having the same name

“At the facility, people living together originally receive the same name. Since our surnames are different, we share at least our given names. Because we’re family.”

Question: Rules shared by the family

“There aren’t really rules… but we received the same education, ate the same food, and slept in the same place to have a lifestyle attitude befitting the name ‘Heo-un’. So we could have the same experiences fairly.”

Question: Examples of ‘lifestyle attitude befitting the name Heo-un’

“Ah. It wasn’t difficult. For example… going to bed late and waking up late.”

…

“Reading poetry collections at least twice a week, becoming afraid of blood, starting middle school a year early, and dropping out of high school.”

And.

“When you meet shamans or other religious people, you don’t introduce your name.”

….

This is the last question.

Question: Name of the facility

“Ah, that place is….”

And I already knew the answer.

While there were countless strange organizations in this world, there was only one insane group that operated childcare facilities in this manner….

“…It’s a facility called Love Paradise Shelter.”

….

Love Paradise

“Do you know of it?”

I know it.

A fairly famous cult group in Korea of this world.

I had seen that name once at the Disaster Management Bureau too.

-Human life is full of fear. A Paradise Lover who will protect and love you so you are no longer afraid is waiting for you. Come to Love Paradise.

When the White Tiger Team processed the ‘Red Clothes at Exit 4’ ghost story at my suggestion, the agents had written that text while pretending to be cult missionaries impersonating that very place.

However, there’s something more that comes to mind for me.

This group was registered as a standalone page on the wiki.

Love Paradise

One of the new religions that was popular in early 2000s Korea in the world.

They promoted slogans like ‘you can meet your ideal type‘ or ‘we’ll make you into your imagined ideal type‘, proselytizing in ways that would tempt the younger generation and gaining fame on the early internet at the time.

But the reality was an unethical, occult cult group that reformed believers’ lives and forced strange rituals to make them into something suitable for a specific being called the ‘Paradise Lover‘.

And.

The hypothesis that this process was influenced by the Mumyeong Chanran Temple Mimic Cult received favorable reviews for being interesting, and it was eventually established as one of the subsidiary organizations of the Mimic Cult.

That facility belongs to Mumyeong Chanran Temple.

Jang Heo-un had grown up in a Mumyeong Chanran Temple facility.

And he joined Baekillmong Corporation to save the Mumyeong Chanran Temple believers he grew up with….

The orphans from the facility he called ‘family’, who had become subjects of the ritual together.

‘….’

Coming this far, I can understand how Lee Heo-un from the Joyful Research Institute is connected….

‘That Heo-un was the target of the ritual.’

When the ‘Paradise Lover’ is a real person, they sometimes attempt to steal the narrative through ritual processes that mimic that person.

An act following Mumyeong Chanran Temple’s doctrine of trying to become a meaningful existence in this world.

‘Were they raising someone who could mimic Lee Heo-un from the Joyful Research Institute and steal that researcher’s role?’

Detailed stories not written in , things I didn’t know, are coming to me through the stories of those around me.

Cold sweat that can’t be wiped away feels like a hallucination flowing down my spine….

[Ah, mimicking someone’s life twists and turns one by one, molding a role that can create a similar story….]

[Whether they inherited the spirit of the industrial capitalist era, they treat stories like machining mechanical parts.]

[As if expecting the same process to produce identical products!]

And one of them is standing before us.

A counterfeit made to copy ‘Lee Heo-un’.

Kim Heo-woon bows his head deeply.

“Actually, saying I came just for introductions was a lie.”

….

“I came to find you, Employee, because there’s something I desperately want to ask.”

He speaks with extreme politeness.

An absurd statement.

“Just as you took in Jang Heo-un, could you please take all of us in too?”

…!!

“We can tell. Since we’re all Heo-uns. …Isn’t Jang Heo-un happy now under your care, Employee?”

I feel like I’m getting a headache.

Reason for this request

“…We can’t return to other places.”

His voice becomes lower.

“The facility we were at burned down, and we can’t go to other Love Paradise shelters… We can’t live like we used to.”

I knew the reason even without him saying it.

‘The fire.’

That fire was also part of a ritual to follow the narrative of the researcher from the Joyful Research Institute….

And Jang Heo-un, who survived that fire and gained the narrative of ‘surviving a major fire at a residential facility’, was the finished product.

But this person… was one of those culled and used as material in that process.

“Please, give us the same name that Jang Heo-un received.”

….

“Then we can exist as the same person. That’s how we were raised!”

His voice becomes desperate.

“…Even Jang Heo-un entering first seems like a meaningful story somehow. Doesn’t it seem like he received the surname ‘Jang’ because he was the eldest, the firstborn? Then we could continue….”

I raised my hand. Kim Heo-woon hurriedly bowed his head, taking a posture as if expecting my hand to touch him….

But smoke rises from my hand.

Rejection

“…Excuse me?”

Other excellent options

▶Break away from Lee Heo-un’s life

▶Live your own life

“Excuse me? But… I….”

Pfft, I hear Ho Yu-won quietly laughing from beside the elevator. As if he’d heard an absurd proposal.

And.

“I’ve already received the Mimic’s divine authority, so, to enter here…. So at this rate, I can’t escape,”

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