The Calamity-Class Artifacts in Ghost Stories Are Obsessed with Me - Chapter 17

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

Calamity-Class Relics in Urban Legends – Episode 17
The train glided smoothly along the tracks.
Woo Ju sat by the window, his head tilted against the glass as he gazed out at the passing landscape.
‘It’s been almost half a year since I’ve been home.’
He usually visited during holidays, but he’d skipped Lunar New Year with a convenient excuse about being busy.
Though it wasn’t exactly a lie.
He really had been swamped with substitute shifts on New Year’s Day.
But if he was honest about priorities, there was no real need to work that day.
He’d volunteered for the shift precisely because he didn’t want to go home.
Why hadn’t he wanted to go home?
Just… he hadn’t wanted to. Back then, he was still bouncing between part-time jobs, unemployed and going nowhere.
But things were different now.
‘They’re going to be shocked.’
A smile tugged at the corners of Woo Ju’s mouth.
Now he was a proper salaried employee—one with a salary that could rival any major corporation.
And this time, he’d even pulled off a job smoothly enough to get a bonus. Fifty thousand won. Fifty thousand.
Now, when relatives asked if he’d landed employment during the holidays, he could answer without a shred of worry.
‘Who am I? A man who gets fifty-thousand-won bonuses.’
One sentence and they’d all lose their minds with amazement.
Of course, he had no intention of laying it all out plainly. He couldn’t just blurt out his real workplace name—the Inspection Agency—after all.
The saving grace was that he didn’t have to puzzle through a cover story on his own.
The Inspection Agency had prepared fake business cards for all its employees and even trained him on exactly how to explain his position.
‘The company name was SJ Trading.’
Everyone on the Inspection Agency’s payroll officially worked for SJ Trading.
SJ Trading had a legitimate website that came up in internet searches, and news articles about their contracts and revenue figures appeared regularly online.
Woo Ju had checked carefully—it was constructed so meticulously that no one could possibly see through it.
‘Or maybe the company actually exists and they just borrow its name?’
That was possible. Either way, it didn’t really matter to him.
What mattered was that he felt genuinely at ease about going home—something that hadn’t happened in a long time.
‘I’ll pick up some beef when I get there, and Red Ginseng for Father since he’s been feeling run down… and some clothes for Mother…’
His younger sister would jump around like a monkey if he just handed her a few fifty-thousand-won notes.
‘Ugh. Just thinking about it makes me feel sick.’
Not that she was ever easy to watch, but when she got excited and started fooling around, it was absolutely unbearable.
The thought made him decide he absolutely couldn’t give her the money for free. He’d have to give her a stern talking-to first, then hand it over.
‘Or maybe I could make her imitate a monkey.’
The very idea was delightful.
Lost in pleasant thoughts while gazing out the window, Woo Ju gradually drifted off to sleep.
When he came to his senses—
Woo Ju found himself aboard some kind of theme park train. It was shaped like a monkey, though it looked terribly old and shabby.
The train clattered forward slowly, and in the front section sat people with ghastly, pale complexions.
At first glance, their skin tone was plainly wrong.
It wasn’t simply the tense faces of people nervous about a carnival ride. It was the expression of those anticipating something horrific.
‘Ah.’
Woo Ju belatedly realized he recognized this scene.
To be precise, this wasn’t the first time he’d had this ‘dream’.
[Next is Flaying, Flaying]
The moment he understood that, an eerie voice crackled over the PA system.
Hearing it brought the memories rushing back with vivid clarity.
This was a dream he’d had repeatedly over several weeks—long before he’d picked up the Iron Pipe.
‘It was definitely…’
The first dream had started with boarding this monkey-shaped train.
He couldn’t recall why he’d climbed aboard. In the dream logic of sleep, it had simply felt like the natural thing to do.
But not long after boarding, Woo Ju had quickly come to regret it.
And the reason was right behind him.
Woo Ju slowly turned his head. His face immediately twisted in disgust.
Behind him sat ‘passengers’ in all manner of grotesque and pitiful conditions.
Their bodies were torn open, severed, melting—and yet they remained seated in the rows.
Around these passengers stood bizarre, ape-like creatures.
-Hehehehehehe.
-Hehehehe!
They danced their way toward the train, their hands gripping sharp blades.
This was the substance of the dream.
Once you boarded this train, an announcer would name a form of torture, and then monkeys would appear and actually inflict it upon the passengers.
‘But the worst part……’
was that the nightmare kept repeating.
That’s right.
The first time he’d dreamed it, people in the very back row had suffered. The second dream, it was the row after that person, then the next. And now, this time, it was the turn of the passenger sitting directly behind him.
The monkeys approached the passenger to perform the Flaying, moving toward a woman with a pallid, exhausted complexion.
Woo Ju knew this was a dream. But he couldn’t shake the creeping dread.
It didn’t feel like a mere dream.
‘Wait. Now that I think about it… isn’t this a Lucid Dream?’
As the monkeys drew near, the realization struck him suddenly.
If it was a Lucid Dream, why should he just sit here and watch?
“Come to think of it, that’s pretty annoying.”
What was so great about these monkeys that he should be afraid? What were they?
True, the train’s restraints had him pinned firmly in place.
But what did that matter?
He could just break them.
Tap.
The moment the thought crossed his mind, a cool, weighty sensation bloomed in his fingertips.
An Iron Pipe.
Woo Ju didn’t hesitate. He acted at once.
Crunch-crunch-crunch-crack!
He tilted the Iron Pipe and shattered the restraints binding him.
Then he surged to his feet.
“Screech?!”
“Screech-screech!”
The monkeys recoiled in shock, then wheeled around in anger, abandoning the woman in the rear seat and lumbering toward him instead.
“You’re so damn loud.”
Before, when he’d dreamed this, he’d trembled with fear at the sight of them. Now it was the opposite.
“Do you have any idea how many nights you’ve cost me in sleep?”
Woo Ju spoke with fury, raising the Iron Pipe in both hands.
His body felt heavy, but it didn’t matter. Power surged through his grip on the pipe.
The monkeys came at him in a wave.
Crash-crash-crash-crash!
Woo Ju swung the Iron Pipe with satisfying force, sending them flying backward like cannonballs. They tumbled down and shattered below with a wet crunch.
The sight of it was exhilarating.
But Woo Ju wasn’t satisfied.
“Next station: Wreckage. Business Closed. You bastards!”
He evacuated the surviving passengers to safety, then returned and began smashing the monkey-shaped train to pieces with his Iron Pipe.
Bang, bang, bang, bang!
The monkey train crumbled in moments.
But Woo Ju wasn’t done—he started demolishing the tracks themselves.
-Stop, please stop.
-We’re begging you.
At some point, the voice that had been naming tortures and terrorizing the passengers turned pleading, but Woo Ju paid it no mind.
He went on destroying everything in sight, purging his stress with savage satisfaction.
* * *
-This train will be arriving at Jeonju Station momentarily.
Woo Ju’s eyes opened slowly to the piercing announcement.
Still heavy with sleep, he stared blankly into empty space before realizing he was aboard a train heading home.
“Monkeys……”
And yet the dream lingered vividly in his mind—the grotesque monkey train, the memory of smashing it to pieces.
“Mm.”
Woo Ju smiled with satisfaction.
It was an absurd dream, but somehow it left him refreshed. Especially the part where the haughty announcement gradually turned to pleading, then fell apart entirely—that was the highlight.
By the end, it was muttering in resignation: “It’s all over now……” or something like that.
He chuckled quietly at the memory.
Sleep-deprived as he was, he felt strangely at peace.
The dream had given him an odd sense of closure.
“We’re here.”
Before long, the train pulled into Jeonju Station and came to a halt.
Woo Ju grabbed his luggage and hurried off the train.
It had been half a year since he’d returned home, and nothing much seemed to have changed since his last visit.
He exited the station, made his way to where the taxis were gathered, joined the queue, and soon climbed into one.
“Seo Shin-dong Lotte Department Store, please.”
“Yes, sir.”
Rather than head straight home, Woo Ju decided to stop at the department store first.
He needed to buy gifts for his mother and father. The station wasn’t far from the department store, so he arrived quickly.
He went inside and purchased the gifts he’d had in mind beforehand.
A beef set, Red Ginseng, and clothes as well. After finishing his shopping, Woo Ju took a taxi home with several bulging paper bags in hand.
“We’ve arrived.”
It wasn’t long before they reached an apartment complex not far from the department store.
It was an older building, but Woo Ju had lived there since childhood.
‘If I keep earning like this, I’ll be able to buy my parents a new home.’
Seoul’s apartment prices were outrageous, but in the provinces, even with Woo Ju’s current salary, he could afford a decent apartment after just a year or so of saving.
With a satisfied smile, Woo Ju took the elevator up to his apartment.
Ding-dong.
He finally arrived at the front door and pressed the buzzer.
Soon, bustling sounds came from inside, and the door swung open.
“Woo Ju’s here? Oh my, what’s with all those bags you’re carrying?”
The one who greeted him was his mother. Seeing her face after so long, Woo Ju smiled and spoke.
“I picked up some gifts on the way.”
“Gifts? Where did you get the money for that?”
“I told you, didn’t I? I got the job.”
“Even with a job, you’re still a fresh graduate—practically broke!”
“Oh, I’m earning fine. This is beef and clothes for you. Your father said his health’s been weak, so I got some Red Ginseng too.”
“My goodness, goodness. You, spending so much…….”
Even as she protested, his mother seemed delighted with the gifts Woo Ju had brought.
“Hmm, Woo Ju’s here? What did you bring?”
Soon his father emerged from the bedroom and asked him.
Woo Ju smiled and answered.
“Red Ginseng. And I brought this too so we could have some together, Father.”
With a slight grin, Woo Ju pulled something from his bag. It was Whiskey.
While his father had been moderately pleased at the mention of Red Ginseng, the sight of the Whiskey bottle made him break into a bright smile.
“Oh, where did you get this? My, how much did this cost?”
“I got it cheap through someone I know.”
“Great, that’s wonderful.”
“Here’s this fellow claiming his health is weak, yet he’s thrilled to see alcohol. Honestly.”
His mother rebuked him lightly, but his father’s smile never faded.
Woo Ju gazed at the scene contentedly, then suddenly remembered his younger sister and asked.
“Where’s Eun Ha?”
He’d wondered if she was cooped up in her room instead of coming out to see her brother, but that wasn’t quite it.
“She’s working part-time these days. Earning pocket money. She’ll probably be back this evening.”
“She’s working part-time?”
“Yes. Something about being a photo model, she said.”
“She hasn’t been scammed, has she?”
“You! Your sister is pretty, you know.”
At those words, Woo Ju’s expression twisted, but he couldn’t press his mother on it, so he let it slide for now.
Still, he couldn’t shake the feeling that she might have fallen for some scam.
“By the way, what’s this about Father seeing things? Does he see ghosts or something?”
“Well……. It’s like this.”
His father, holding a bottle of Whiskey and grinning stupidly, wore a troubled expression at Woo Ju’s question, then let out a sigh and spoke.
“Strange things do seem to appear.”
He then told several stories.
How he’d gotten up in the dead of night for water and found someone standing motionless in the kitchen, only to disappear suddenly.
Or how he’d woken in the middle of the night to find someone staring at him from beside the bed. Stories like that.
His mother, listening to this from the side, offered her own comment.
“If you ask me, it’s because of that thing you picked up last time.”
“No, why are you bringing that up now?”
“Why wouldn’t it be! Ever since he brought that thing home, he’s been like this the whole time!”
“Like what?”
When Woo Ju interjected with the question, his father’s expression soured, but his mother spoke quickly.
“He picked up a strange stone in the mountains last time. After that, he started seeing things that aren’t there.”
“A stone? Can I see it too?”
“Of course! Even though I told him to throw it away, he won’t get rid of it—he keeps dragging it around. You take a look.”
With that, his mother led Woo Ju into the master bedroom and showed him something.
“This is it.”
It was a stone, no larger than a fist.
Until that moment, Woo Ju had simply assumed his father was hallucinating.
But the instant he saw it with his own eyes—
Woo Ju’s expression darkened sharply.
The stone emanated an aura similar to what he had felt from the stake beneath the Hope Meditation Center.
To be continued in the next episode ▶
Calamity-Class Relics from Urban Legends and Their Obsessions
Author
Lee Se-gye
Publishers
Kim Seok-hwan, Choi Se-ra
Published by
Gerae Publishing
Contact
[email protected]
Publication Date
May 26, 2026
UCI
G720:N+A327-20260410110
※ This e-book is protected by copyright law. Unauthorized reproduction and duplication are prohibited, and violations may result in both criminal and civil liability.
※ Pentagram eagerly awaits your precious manuscripts.

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