I was fucked.
This was not a quotation of the first sentence of a famous novel. I was truly fucked.
I had signed up for summer session, followed Kim Jihoon to Dowon High School, then vanished, so I missed Professor Choi’s lecture. Since I had not attended at all, naturally, my dream of laundering my grades could not come true either.
To think I had only wasted the summer session tuition and accomplished nothing. The crime of being seduced by the claim that YouTube was the future and neglecting reality was grave and heavy. Even if I said my college grades had gone to hell because I got caught up in an Anomaly, who would believe me?
Fortunately, Professor Choi knew I had not skipped class because I had been playing around, but because I had gone missing and come back. Four philosophy department students had disappeared at once, so there was no way the news would not reach a professor’s ears.
“I heard what happened. Jihye is still in the hospital, and the other two are still missing?”
“Yes….”
“It’s a relief even one of you is safe. It must be hard to focus while thinking about your friends, but since taking summer session has also become difficult, I recommend attending the first semester of your second year without taking a leave of absence.”
“I should….”
With a benevolent face, Professor Choi uttered the terrifying words, “This semester, even if you write me a letter on the short-answer exam paper, I’ll give you an F.” As expected, Professor Choi was scarier than Director Park.
Hankook University was a place where dozens of bizarre incidents happened every day, but if people went missing as a group after making a fuss about filming YouTube, it was only natural that posts would go up on Mevry Time, the university’s anonymous bulletin board.
YouTube is the future
Is it our department that went missing after going to a haunted spot??
The worst possible outcome from an already futureless department, damn
Anonymous1
Anyway YouTube is the problem, tsk tsk. One thing blows up and everyone tries to copy it, then accidents happen
Anonymous2
I heard they didn’t all go missing, just two out of the four
↳ Anonymous OP
Oh, tell us if you know anything
↳ Anonymous2
The one who came back fine by himself is him. The guy who does philosophy with his face
↳ Anonymous OP
What?? Did he survive because he’s handsome
“Kang Iru, you really are alive?”
“Does that bother you?”
Seeing a classmate I was not even close to speak to me about this as soon as the semester began, it seemed the people who used Mevry Time knew all about the philosophy department disappearance case.
Part of me wanted to run my mouth and say my employment luck had exploded, but explaining everything I had gone through would require saying far too much nonsense, so I simply kept my mouth shut.
I also did not have the energy to care about college classmates hovering around asking how I alone had returned to school perfectly fine. After being tormented once by the Anomaly Control Department and Dorae, I had been too busy answering other contacts to even breathe.
Iru, this is Jihoon’s sister.
If you have time, could we meet once?
The number of people who had headed to Dowon High School to film YouTube, including me, was four in total.
Of them, Kim Jihoon and Lim Jinseong were missing, and Park Jihye still had not been discharged even after the semester started. I heard that although her condition had improved compared to right after she came out of Dowon High School, normal meals were difficult for her because of whatever she had experienced in the cafeteria.
So among the group that had gone to Dowon High School, the only one who could be called relatively “fine” was me. It was only natural for the families of the missing to ask me, “What happened to our child?”
Fortunately or unfortunately, the Anomaly Control Department and Dorae had contacted the families of the others before I did. The Anomaly Control Department attached itself to Park Jihye, who had survived Dowon High School, and Dorae visited the families of Kim Jihoon and Lim Jinseong, who were still missing.
Both the Anomaly Control Department and Dorae were organizations far removed from normal, but they could probably explain Anomalies better than I could.
I’m sorry for contacting you so much when you must be having a hard time too.
There’s something I really want to ask about Jihoon.
But even after hearing an explanation based on facts, could anyone coolly move on with, “Oh, our child just had bad luck and got trapped inside an Anomaly!” when their family member had gone missing? At least I could not.
As soon as the orientation session for the first week of the semester ended, I headed to a café near Gangnam Station to meet Kim Jihoon’s sister, Kim Sea.
***
Kim Jihoon was the most action-oriented person I knew. I had met him at the university freshman welcome party, so I had only known him for about a year, but people with that level of initiative were rare.
Just look at how he bought filming equipment because he was going to film YouTube. I had thought I was not behind anyone when it came to doing reckless things without a plan, but I had to concede one step to Kim Jihoon. The only things Kim Jihoon said he would do and then did not do were studying for midterms and finals.
“I’m going to join Dorae.”
And now it turned out that this initiative ran in the family.
“I won’t be able to find him right away just because I join, but it’ll still be better than doing nothing. Jinseong’s father also decided to join Dorae with me.”
If one joined Dorae and became a Retriever, one could recover family, friends, or lovers caught up in Anomalies. This was the explanation I had also heard when I was kidnapped by Director Park.
Missing people trapped in Anomalies usually ended up in abnormal states. They died horribly, leaving not even remains to find, or, if not that, in very rare cases, they fell into becoming special entities bound to the Anomaly, like Minsu or the Caretaker.
It was obvious that the Retrievers who searched for missing people would also have difficulty keeping all their limbs intact. The only Retriever I knew was Lee Jaeyoung, whose name and Teeth were all I had seen, but had he not also eventually vanished while searching for missing people, leaving only his Teeth behind?
“Wouldn’t that be too dangerous?”
“Going into Anomalies?”
“Yes.”
“It probably would. Dorae explained it in detail too, separate from recommending employment. They said if you get caught up in an Anomaly, you can suffer a fate worse than death.”
“…….”
“Still, I should look into it as much as I can. He may be a damn nuisance, but I’m his sister.”
Would Sea be safe if she entered an Anomaly?
Even if she was lucky and came back safely once or twice, she would not be safe forever. The same went for Lim Jinseong’s father. The vicious cycle of more missing people appearing while trying to find missing people would repeat.
“So, about Jihoon’s appearance, could you maybe describe it a little more specifically….”
“Um, Sea.”
“Yes?”
“Could you put off joining Dorae for just a little while?”
My feelings were complicated.
“Why?”
“I think it would be better for me to do it than you.”
“But….”
“I’m sure you thought about it a lot before deciding, but I think I can help.”
I desperately wanted to recover my missing friends, but at the same time, I never wanted to enter an Anomaly again. Seeing his sister say she would take the risk to recover a family member trapped in an Anomaly made me feel guilty, while on the other hand, I wanted to treat all of this as someone else’s problem.
Had Mom not said so too? That I should know how to turn away, moderately, if it seemed like I could not save something.
But the problem was that I was more likely to bring back Kim Jihoon and Lim Jinseong than Sea or Lim Jinseong’s father. I could communicate with ordinary entities inside Anomalies, and through Minsu, it would probably be possible to figure out where those two were.
If someone had to enter an Anomaly, it was better for the person with even slightly higher odds of survival to go in. Dorae did not mark people the way the Anomaly Control Department did to prevent mental contamination, did it? So if Sea or Lim Jinseong’s father got dragged into it for no reason, they would end up in a state worse than death too.
Knowing that, it was difficult to keep my mouth shut and pretend not to know.
“I’ll look into it a little more and contact you.”
The truth is, I just want to shut my mouth completely and pretend I don’t know.
Just because I could communicate with ordinary entities did not mean they were not disgusting. My aesthetic standards were slightly above the standards of modern society, and when I saw things shaped differently from humans, I felt psychological revulsion.
Thanks to Minsu, I recovered easily even when I was injured, but pain was still pain. Even when the Caretaker Impostor in Baekju Apartment had said it would tell me Kim Jihoon and Lim Jinseong’s locations if I cut off a finger, had I not given up on the trade because I did not have the confidence to cut off my own finger?
I had no heroic tendencies. That was why I had refused to become a Controller even after hearing that I had become the ultimate traitor to my country. If I had to categorize myself, I was closer to the vile modern person type. An ordinary? Egoist? Who considered his own safety most important. Something like that.
“Thank you so much for caring when you must be having a hard time too.”
However, in one corner of a vile modern person’s heart, conscience was always alive and breathing….
After seeing Sea, who repeatedly expressed her gratitude to me, off to Gangnam Station, I searched through my jacket pocket and found a business card. It was the card Jeon Jiho had given me.
“Ha….”
When I thought of Jeon Jiho saying I should make a contract with him and become a top-tier Controller, a sigh escaped on its own. But searching for missing people with the Anomaly Control Department involved would be safer than immediately calling Minsu into reality, so I had no other choice.
After a short dial tone, the call connected to Jeon Jiho right away.
“Hello, this is Kang Iru.”
Seriously, once I find Kim Jihoon and Lim Jinseong, I’m going to live without ever seeing even the first letter of Anomalies again. Just the date I promised Minsu! Exactly that! Cleanly! Like a man! I’ll keep that, and then I’ll never get involved again.
“Is the military exemption in the employment options still valid?”