Compared to getting out of the restraints, undoing the bindings on my wrists was easy. In the sense that Dore did not knock people out first and then put something like that on them, they were better than the Anomaly Control Department. Other than that, though, they seemed about the same.
When you have been kidnapped, moving rashly is extremely dangerous. If I had not had something to rely on, I would have stayed still until I figured out where I was or until every last trace of people disappeared.
But I did have something to rely on. The faith that even if another tragedy happened and a disaster alert went out to the entire nation, if I was in danger, “Minsu” would come running out of Dowon High School for me.
No matter how insane Dore was, ramming a perfectly fine sedan with a van and making a habit of kidnapping civilians, they were still human. Which meant they had to be weaker than “Minsu,” a special entity inside an anomaly. So I decided to trust “Minsu” and make my escape. A brand-new form of borrowing a tiger’s威? No, more like borrowing a monster’s power to scare off humans.
First I checked where I had been brought. Usually, after kidnapping someone, people locked them in some empty sealed room or warehouse, but the place I was trapped in looked like an ordinary apartment except for the lack of windows.
The only furniture was the chair I had been tied to and a bed with nothing on it but a mattress, but the floor and the molding looked like the bedroom of an old low-income apartment built ages ago.
I walked over to the door and checked first whether there was any sign of someone outside. Naturally, the door was locked from the outside. I could not hear a single human voice or footstep.
Even after I rattled the locked doorknob several times, there was no reaction from outside. That probably meant no one was out there. Or they really were complete lunatics and were watching to see what I would do.
“Ah, shit...”
Because the door was locked, there was not much I could do even after getting free. It would have been nice if I could do something cool like rip the doorknob off or pick the lock with pure hand skill like in a movie, but doing something like that barehanded without tools was impossible. If I could do that, I would have joined the National Intelligence Service a long time ago.
If there had at least been a window, I could have jumped out. In despair at a room with nothing but a door, I decided to take a better look around inside. There was nothing to see except the chair and the bed, though.
There was nothing unusual near the chair except for the rope I had untied. The bed did not stand out in any way either except that it was old. Just in case, I lifted up the mattress on the bed. Since this was a world where there could be wardrobes leading to other worlds, maybe there would be a hole under the bed leading outside.
This was one of those times when having an N on the MBTI actually helped. I spent so much time thinking pointless thoughts in everyday life that even after getting kidnapped, here I was flipping over a mattress. There was no hole under it leading outside, but there was a crumpled wad of paper stuffed in there.
Welcome, residents of Baekju Apartments.
└ lol every time I read this rules sheet it pisses me off; can we stop using the word welcome? They’re always “welcoming” us when every single one of them tries to kill me on sight
└ Then you write the rules sheet yourself. If you don’t want it to look strange to the special entities, it has to be written like this.
The contents written on the paper were similar in format to the rules sheet I had seen at Dowon High School. There was messy handwritten text added underneath, but the way it kept saying things like If you cannot do that, move into Baekju Apartments at the end of the rules was exactly the same as the pattern at Dowon High School, where it said to enroll in the school if it looked like you could not do it.
20. Dore Co., Ltd. always thanks the retrievers for your hard work.
Please dispose of this rules sheet so that the resident special entities of Baekju Apartments cannot confirm it.
└ Recommended disposal method: tear it into small pieces, chew it, and swallow it.
└ I’m Lee Jaeyoung and all my teeth got pulled out so I just shoved it where it could be seen, if you find this please get rid of it for me
After I finished reading the last item, I realized this was a rules sheet written not by the Anomaly Control Department but by Dore. It had been updated by hand several times, but the last date written on it was seven years ago. Apparently someone named Lee Jaeyoung, whose teeth had all been pulled out, had shoved the sheet between the mattress. Since he could not chew up the paper and swallow it to dispose of it.
1. Baekju Apartments were demolished in 1991 due to poor construction.
1-1. Baekju Apartments are an anomaly that can be entered simply by closing the master bedroom door of Unit 201 in Tricent Ityllazium, newly built on the same site. By agreement with the previous owner, Unit 201 of Tricent Ityllazium is owned and managed by Dore Co., Ltd.
1-2. Baekju Apartments can be exited immediately by finding the special entity called “the caretaker” and saying, “I’m just a visitor, and I’m leaving now.” “The caretaker” has the appearance of a middle-aged man in his fifties, wears a guard uniform, and black sneakers. Please always behave kindly toward “the caretaker.”
└ Be careful because there are things pretending to be the caretaker!!! If it doesn’t have a human face, it isn’t the caretaker!!!
└ But is the caretaker maybe the boss’s husband?
└ sorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorry
1-3. If you were not kind to “the caretaker,” move into Baekju Apartments.
That was my very first thought: Why are rules sheets always written like conditional statements?
Then the next thought hit me. I had probably been dragged to Unit 201 of some apartment called Tricent-whatever-Ityllazium. And because that middle-aged woman who told me to become one of them had walked out after closing the door, that meant I had entered an anomaly again. Again. Again. Again.
They had thrown a person straight into an anomaly and then told him to let them know if he changed his mind? My mouth fell open on its own from sheer disbelief. What I really wanted, right then, was to call “Minsu” over and have him turn the whole place upside down. Turn Baekju Apartments from an apartment near an elementary school into an apartment near a high school. These days the average age of the school-age population was getting older, so maybe having a high school nearby would actually help apartment prices more than an elementary school.
Thinking stupid thoughts like that, I went back to attacking the doorknob in the name of escape. I did not know who had said it, but there was a saying like that, wasn’t there? Knock, and it shall be opened to you. So I tried knocking on the door too.
Maybe it was because I was inside an anomaly, or maybe it was just my lack of grip strength, but no matter how long I wrestled with it, the door did not open right away. I sank down pitifully in front of it and thought of “Minsu.” “Minsu,” are you asleep? I’m such an idiot, aren’t I. Whenever things get hard, I always think of you...
As I pictured “Minsu’s” handsome face, I heard knocking from outside the door.
{Who is it who is it why every time every time every time in my room in my room in my room}
{Who’s in my room again there’s someone again there is again this time too again}
The knocking grew louder and soon turned into pounding against the door. Cold sweat ran down my back on instinct.
3. If you entered Baekju Apartments by closing the master bedroom door of Unit 201 in Tricent Ityllazium, leave that room quickly. The starting point is Unit 201 of Baekju Apartments, and the resident living there is aggressive toward retrievers. If you remain at the starting point for too long, move into Baekju Apartments.
{Who who open the door open the door}
If it were me, and different cockroaches kept entering the apartment through my room every single time, I would probably develop a neurosis and become aggressive too.
But I genuinely felt wronged. I mean, it was not that I had wanted to stay in there quietly. The door would not open, so I was trapped. I understood how the resident felt, getting angry at the sight of a cockroach in their room, but I had not come in here of my own will.
“Excuse me!”
{Open the do... huh?}
“I’m trapped in here too, you know? Could you open the door from the outside for me?”
At this point, the plan was simple: survive by becoming a talking cockroach.
“I’m sure you feel wronged too, with things coming in through here all the time. I understand all of that.”
{.......}
“But I really feel wronged too. The door is locked, so I can’t open it myself, okay? So could you open it from your side first?”
The pounding on the door stopped dead.
Then a voice, cracked all to pieces, said this:
{Ah, ah... a gu est? You were a gu est. Just a mo ment, please wait.}
***
Maybe even anomaly residents forgot where they put their room keys, because the door did not open until quite a while later. Before it did, I neatly tore up the Dore Co., Ltd. rules sheet I had finished reading and chewed it up. I had to do for Lee Jaeyoung what he could not do without teeth. After the cockroach experience, this made it a goat experience too.
Compared to the tentacle teachers at Dowon High School, the residents of Baekju Apartments were neat-looking. There was a black circle drawn where the face should have been, and they had a few too many arms or fingers... but still, much better than tentacles with blades on them.
“Oh wow, you must have been really startled, with someone suddenly inside your room, right? I really didn’t want to come in either, but someone kidnapped me and put me here, so there was nothing I could do about it.”
{Kidnapped?}
“Yes. I guess I’ve been irresistibly popular lately...”
Maybe the resident of Unit 201 had been overwhelmed by how nonstop I was talking, because he sat me down in what I guessed was the kitchen and even poured me some tea. I did not have the courage to drink anything given to me inside an anomaly, so I lied and said, “I’m really grateful, but if I have caffeine I pass out, so I can’t drink tea. I’ll just accept the kindness.”
Apparently the rules sheet written by Dore was no more accurate than the one from the Anomaly Control Department, because the resident who was supposedly highly aggressive looked completely frantic over my saying I could not drink tea and offered to bring me water instead.
{It’s be en a long time since we had a gu est. My hos pitality is lacking.}
“Oh, no, not at all. I’m the one who showed up out of nowhere. Thank you again for opening the door.”
{No, no. Neigh bors have to talk to each other and live to gether.}
The circle drawn on his face stretched into an oval. He had neither eyes nor mouth, but I could tell this resident was smiling. While he seemed to be in a good mood, I quickly fired off a question.
“Could you tell me where I’d have to go to meet ‘the caretaker’?”
{The care taker?}
At some point the oval that had stretched out narrowed, and then became a triangle.
{You are my gu est, so why are you looking for the care taker?}
Several of his arms shot out and grabbed me.
{Your hos pitality is not over yet, so why are you looking for the care taker?}
“Minsu”! Save me!
Only in my head, I called desperately for my guardian angel, my cheat key, my all-purpose monster, “Minsu.”