The Calamity-Class Artifacts in Ghost Stories Are Obsessed with Me - Chapter 2

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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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Calamity-grade Artifacts Obsessed with Me · Episode 2
When the Steel Pipe appeared out of nowhere, swinging it was almost a reflexive action.
Even as he swung, he didn’t expect any real effect.
After all, his full-force kick from before hadn’t done a thing to her.
‘What the—?’
So when the Woman was struck by the pipe and went flying backward, Ujoo felt a jolt of genuine shock.
‘She flew that far? From just one hit?’
While his mind was reeling at the absurdity of it, the Woman who had slammed into the far wall steadied herself and rose, swaying slightly.
Crunch, crunch—.
The sound of grinding teeth filled the air.
“Can’t forgive. Can’t forgive. Can’t forgive. Can’t forgive. Can’t forgive.”
At the same time, she muttered something low and guttural, her eyes completely rolled back in her skull, visible between strands of hair.
Ujoo responded the only way he knew how—with reason.
“No, you started this. You were the one throwing a fit.”
But even as he said it, he knew it wouldn’t do much good.
No matter how oblivious someone was, they’d have to notice something was wrong by now.
‘Is she even… human?’
Something was off.
That grotesquely massive frame. Strength that made no sense. Durability that shouldn’t exist.
Then, the Woman rushed at him again. And this time, Ujoo didn’t hesitate—he swung the Steel Pipe without thinking.
Boom—!
The Woman shot backward even faster than before.
But it wasn’t just the impact—the wall behind her cracked, deep fissures spreading like a web.
“What the hell.”
Ujoo’s face went pale.
‘The wall has a crack in it!’
The thought spiraled. A crack in the wall. No matter how much this rude customer needed to be subdued, he knew he’d crossed a line.
Even if the part-time pay was decent, repair costs would definitely put him in the red!
“I can’t… forgive—”
“Enough!”
So when the Woman staggered to her feet again, Ujoo snapped. He raised the Steel Pipe, fury burning in his eyes.
The Woman flinched and stumbled backward.
“If you can’t forgive, what are you gonna do about it? How am I supposed to fix that wall!”
Ujoo advanced on her, Steel Pipe in hand.
He’d already registered that she wasn’t a normal human. But that was one thing. This was another.
He’d scrambled to find this short-term gig because he didn’t even have money for food tomorrow—and now instead of earning, he was about to owe repairs.
As the gap between them narrowed to just a few paces—
Whoosh—!
A sudden gust of wind whipped through from nowhere. Ujoo instinctively squeezed his eyes shut.
“Huh?”
When he opened them again, the Woman had vanished without a trace.
But that wasn’t all.
“What…?”
The wall that had been smashed where she’d hit it was now pristine—completely restored.
It felt like he’d been caught in a spell.
Ujoo blinked slowly and scanned the space around him. But there was nothing else out of the ordinary.
“What just happened?”
Eventually, after standing in the Lobby for a long moment, Ujoo made his way back behind the Counter.
He slumped into the chair and gazed out through the still-open Counter window, muttering to himself.
“I swear, it’s like I’ve been bewitched.”
Then Ujoo glanced at the clock.
Half an hour had already slipped away. That confrontation with the mysterious Woman had eaten up quite a bit of time.
“Sigh.”
Ujoo let out a long breath and shook his head slowly.
Truth was, he’d been dealing with strange occurrences since childhood.
So at some point, he’d decided to keep things simple.
‘The past is the past.’
In the end, the wall was fine and the Trouble Customer was gone. Wasn’t that a win?
Besides, it was only one shift at this Reading Room anyway.
Fortunately, nothing else unusual happened after that.
Occasionally customers would arrive, but they all made their way quietly to their seats.
Time drifted on and on.
“It’s over!”
Finally, closing time had come.
The duty roster instructed him to call the Boss directly after his shift ended, so Ujoo pulled out his phone and dialed right away.
After a few rings, the line connected.
“Boss? This is the part-time worker at the Reading Room.”
—Oh! Is everything all right?
“Pardon? Ah, yes. Everything’s fine.”
—Nothing unusual happened?
There was something oddly relieved in his voice, and Ujoo felt confused even as he answered honestly.
“Actually, a trouble customer came by partway through.”
—A trouble customer?
“Yes. Some tall woman came in asking strange questions, and then suddenly she just rushed at me.”
The moment he said that,
a sharp intake of breath came through the phone.
—So, so what happened?
“I managed to drive her away.”
—What? How did you manage that?
“I drove her away.”
Even as he spoke, Ujoo felt a nagging disbelief. The situation had been so surreal.
In fact, he’d half expected the Boss to ask him if he’d been dreaming.
—Is that really true?
But the response was unexpected.
—You really drove her away?
“Yes, well.”
—Please wait just a moment!
Then the line went dead.
Ujoo’s face filled with question marks.
‘Less than ten minutes left on my shift?’
After hesitating a moment, Ujoo scratched his chin and sat back down in the chair.
He decided that if there was no contact after his shift ended, he’d call back.
But about five minutes passed.
Screech—
A car came to a harsh stop outside, and moments later someone came rushing through the Reading Room door in a frenzy.
“Ujoo!”
Ujoo stood at the sound of his name. The voice was familiar—it was unmistakably the Reading Room Boss he’d just called.
He wondered if it was okay to raise his voice like that in a Reading Room, but then he remembered that even during that commotion in the early hours, nobody had complained.
‘Are the rooms soundproofed well?’
With that thought, Ujoo stepped out from behind the Counter and answered.
“Yes, I’m here.”
“Could you tell me more details about what you mentioned earlier?”
“Ah, yes.”
The Boss sounded so urgent that Ujoo simply answered as asked.
Of course, he left out anything about summoning the Steel Pipe.
After hearing everything, the Boss suddenly grabbed Ujoo’s hand.
“Would you work a bit longer at our Reading Room?”
“What? Longer?”
“Just one week! Just one week—how about it?”
“Hmm.”
Ujoo made a troubled expression.
It wasn’t surprising, really—Ujoo had come to understand that this was no ordinary Reading Room.
He suspected that the Woman who had visited was no ordinary human either.
Having gone through something like that just hours ago, he didn’t want to work longer, no matter how good the pay was.
But then.
“I’ll pay you five million won!”
the Boss said.
Five million won. A full five million for a single week!
“I’ll deposit one million upfront if you’ll take it!”
And a million won advance at that!
“Actually, managing the Reading Room is my true calling.”
“Really? You’ll truly take it on?”
“Yes! Just trust me.”
“Thank you, thank you! Oh, if it becomes bothersome to come and go during your shift, you’re welcome to use the back room. It’s perfectly fine during the day!”
Though “perfectly fine during the day” sounded suspiciously like code for “not fine at night.”
‘Well, five million won is five million won!’
And so Ujoo agreed on the spot to the extended week of work.
The Boss then said he’d handle the daytime shift himself and stepped behind the Counter.
“What about the part-timer I was working with?”
“He ran off.”
“Ah.”
Ujoo nodded. No wonder he’d left in such a hurry.
“Understood. I’ll come back this evening then.”
After gathering his things, Ujoo left the Reading Room.
* * *
Some time after agreeing to the extended shift.
It was only much later that Ujoo began to sense something odd.
‘I accepted that awfully fast, didn’t I?’
Five million won was certainly a lot of money. But there had to be a reason for offering such a sum.
Those unsettling rules. That strange Woman. This Reading Room clearly harbored a dangerous secret.
And yet…….
‘Why aren’t I scared?’
That was the strange part. That was precisely what felt off.
Objectively, it was the kind of situation that should have him terrified, and yet somehow he wasn’t.
It wasn’t as though Ujoo lacked fear by nature.
He was just an ordinary person.
Scared things frightened him. Surprises startled him.
But now, strangely, it was as if he simply thought, ‘Well, that’s an odd Reading Room,’ and left it at that.
‘Actually, I think it started even before that.’
To be specific, after he’d picked up this Steel Pipe.
The fact that a Steel Pipe he’d thrown away came back on its own defied reason. It was strange that the pipe he’d left at home suddenly appeared. Both were impossible.
Yet Ujoo was simply treating it as if it were just a peculiar Steel Pipe and moving on.
It wasn’t that he couldn’t sense the strangeness anymore.
Rather, he’d become more phlegmatic about it.
‘Well, these things happen.’
That was exactly how he thought about it now, just brushing past the oddity.
And in another way, his attention to detail had dulled somewhat.
Had he examined the Steel Pipe more closely, he would have spotted the letter ‘H’ written on its handle long ago.
“No customers today.”
In any case, Ujoo was already on his fourth day of work at the Reading Room.
It hadn’t been difficult at all.
He’d experienced things that would have made a faint-hearted person’s heart stop several times over, yet Ujoo was fine.
More accurately, he’d simply stopped paying attention from the start.
He just thought, ‘There goes another one,’ and moved on.
Ujoo was aware of his own changes and found them puzzling, but he didn’t dwell on them.
As if it had always been his nature.
And so time crept toward four in the morning.
Ding-
The sound of the door opening.
Ujoo straightened up and readied himself to greet a customer. And immediately after.
A calm male voice reached his ears.
“Do you happen to have a freshly extracted heart?”
Ujoo blinked.
Without hesitation, he shut the window closed.
After a brief silence, came the sound of knocking—tap-tap—and the voice again.
“If you don’t have a heart, would you perhaps have eyes or fingers? Even ones that have been harvested for some time would be fine.”
Of course, Ujoo didn’t answer.
But this visitor was persistent.
Tap-tap-
“Or if I may be so bold—could I trouble you for your tendons? I’m quite famished, you see.”
His tone was exquisitely polite, but the substance was nothing of the sort.
That being the case, Ujoo simply didn’t respond, merely picking up the Steel Pipe that had been propped beside the Counter and laying it across his knees. And then silence stretched on for a long while more.
Then, after a considerable pause.
Ding.
The sound of a door opening.
“Ah, if you have business to attend to, please go ahead first.”
The man who had been talking to Ujoo then spoke to someone else.
“Ah, yes. Thank you.”
A woman’s voice answered, and then she tapped on the window pane, speaking through it.
“Excuse me. I’d like to register as a new member.”
Ujoo closed his eyes slowly.
“There’s no one ins— What? Why are you doing that?”
“Mm. I’m in a bit of a hurry right now. Would you happen to be interested in selling just one of your left eyeballs?”
“W-what are you talking about!”
The woman’s voice, bewildered.
At that moment, Ujoo exhaled a sigh and opened his eyes.
“Damn it.”
Even though part of him thought it couldn’t be real, he’d go crazy with unease if he didn’t check for himself.
In the end, Ujoo opened the window. And he saw it.
The face of a man pressed flush against the window. His head bent at a 180-degree angle to peer through the window crack, the man’s eyes spinning wildly in their sockets.
“So you were here?”
The man’s mouth stretched unnaturally wide, his neck elongating grotesquely as his head slid through the window opening.
At the sight of that grotesque figure, Ujoo froze.
“Damn!”
He swung the Steel Pipe with a full arc and struck the man’s head.
To be continued in the next chapter ▶
How Calamity-grade Artifacts from Urban Legends Obsess
Author
Lee Se-gye (Other World Boss)
Publisher
Kim Seok-hwan, Choi Se-ra
Publishing House
Grae Publishing
Inquiries
[email protected]
Publication Date
May 26, 2026
UCI
G720:N+A327-20260410110
※ This e-book is protected under copyright law and unauthorized reproduction or duplication is strictly prohibited. Violation may result in civil and criminal liability.
※ Pentagram welcomes submissions from writers.

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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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