I don’t know that many government departments. I could name a few outward-facing ones, like the Ministry of Employment and Labor, the Ministry of Environment, the Ministry of Health and Welfare... but it’s not like I go around memorizing the names of every government agency in the country.
Still, no matter how little I knew, I definitely knew more about government departments than I did about my major, and a department called the Anomaly Control Department sounded unfamiliar. Wasn’t that the fake department name from the rules sheet? There might be hundreds of jobs in the world, but this was the first time I’d heard of a controller too.
But judging by the fact that none of the police officers tried to stop Jeon Jiho, he clearly had some kind of official authority too. And since he brought up the anomaly at Dowon High School immediately, even though I hadn’t properly given any statement about it yet, he didn’t seem to be a scammer either.
“We’ll discuss the details in one of our interview rooms. There are too many ears here.”
“That police officer already heard everything, though.”
“It doesn’t matter. He’ll forget anyway.”
Jeon Jiho gestured for me to follow him. Honestly, I didn’t want to go anywhere with someone whose identity I couldn’t pin down, but since not a single police officer inside the station tried to stop him, I didn’t really have any other choice except to follow quietly.
Just like Jeon Jiho had said, that they would forget, the moment I stood up from my seat the police officers all stopped moving and talking at once, like puppets with their strings cut. After a brief silence, like a ghost had passed through, they started moving again as if nothing had happened.
The police, acting as though they’d just come out of a pause while no longer recognizing either me or Jeon Jiho, felt uncanny, even if they weren’t quite on the level of the tentacled teachers at Dowon High School. If all those people were putting on an act just to deceive one ordinary college student like me, that would have been a truly ridiculous waste of manpower.
“How did you do that? What is this, hypnosis or something?”
“That’s classified.”
“Ah, yes.”
I was curious what kind of principle could let him do that to more than ten people at once, but Jeon Jiho didn’t look like he had any intention of answering me.
“Controller!”
A black sedan was waiting for me outside the police station. The woman in the driver’s seat rolled down the window and waved at Jeon Jiho.
“This is Mr. Kang Iru, right?”
“Right.”
“Hello, Mr. Iru! I’m assistant controller Lee Manji.”
Lee Manji took the wheel, and Jeon Jiho sat in the back seat with me. It looked like he’d deliberately left the perfectly fine passenger seat empty so he could sit beside me, just in case I decided not to go into that “interview room.”
Unlike Jeon Jiho, Lee Manji had greeted me in a lively tone, but the moment she grabbed the steering wheel, she went quiet too. I didn’t have a hobby of chattering away in front of government officials who said nothing, so I kept my mouth shut as well.
About twenty minutes after we left, Jeon Jiho hauled me out of the car. Feeling like a suspect being led in for interrogation, I stepped into the Anomaly Control Department building.
***
“On February 27, we are conducting the first interview with personnel who entered the anomaly through the abandoned Dowon High School building and survived and returned. All interview content will be recorded and may be used in the production of a rules sheet for escaping the anomaly. A modest compensation will be provided to the interviewee.”
The interview room was more ordinary than I had expected. I’d assumed the Anomaly Control Department was something like the National Intelligence Service and that I’d be strapped into an electric chair and tortured or something, but aside from the fact that it was a sealed room with no windows, it just looked like a normal company meeting room.
After sitting across from me, Jeon Jiho switched on the recorder and told me that everything in the interview would be recorded. I felt uncomfortable about having to talk in detail about what had happened inside the anomaly, but once I heard that this “modest compensation” was ten million won with no tax issues, I decided to cooperate coolly enough. It is an absolute secret that I would have been willing to tell them everything for just a hundred thousand.
Since they said there would be additional compensation, I handed over the broken body cam to Jeon Jiho too. Honestly, it was broken, so it wasn’t much different from dumping junk on him. I definitely didn’t hand it over just to get more money.
“Before proceeding with the interview, I would like you to sign the confidentiality agreement. Violating the confidentiality agreement provided by the Anomaly Control Department may result in disadvantages.”
The interview only began after I had signed the entire mountain of confidentiality forms. They were kind of like the documents they show you when you sign up for insurance, so they weren’t easy to understand. And with Jeon Jiho watching me, I didn’t exactly have the leisure to read through them slowly.
“Why did you visit Dowon High School? Even though it is an abandoned building, it is still state property, so access was restricted. Did you not see the barbed wire?”
The moment I signed every document, the questioning disguised as an interview began. The questions weren’t any different from the police investigation, so I had to keep repeating, like a cassette recorder, “Because YouTube is the future...”
Unlike the police officer, who’d looked flabbergasted, Jeon Jiho listened to me very seriously. When I got to the part about Kim Jihoon wanting to become a YouTuber by modeling himself on Ghost Riya’s channel, he became so serious lines appeared between his brows.
“When did you realize you had entered the anomaly inside Dowon High School?”
“A monster claiming to be a teacher asked us what grade and class we were in.”
“...It asked?”
“Yes. And the person Kim Jihoon had hired was dead, skewered on that monster’s tentacle.”
“......”
“Park Jihye ran off first, and I lied that I was the older brother of a student at Dowon High School so I could get out of the situation for the moment.”
Once Jeon Jiho’s brow had furrowed, it didn’t look like it was ever going to smooth out again. Somehow he had especially deep lines there compared to the rest of his face, so maybe he just had a habit of frowning whenever he heard something he couldn’t understand.
Thinking about how much brow Botox cost, I rattled off everything I’d gone through inside Dowon High School. How I’d lied to get out of it, only for “Minsu” to really appear in front of me, how I’d thought the bastard was the chairman and bolted for the fourth floor, and how I’d run into the man with blade-tipped tentacles for a lower body.
I went on to explain that even though all the classrooms had been locked, I could feel eyes on me through the windows, and the students, like proper third-years, weren’t in their right minds either, so in the end they had torn apart and eaten the man from the fourth floor. Up to that point Jeon Jiho had listened to me without chiming in once, but then he suddenly paused the recording.
“Kang Iru.”
“Huh? It doesn’t end there... Are we only recording up to this point? Do I still get the ten million won if I just tell you this much?”
“There can’t be lies in an interview.”
“What?”
“Unless it is a special case, communication with the entities inside an anomaly is impossible. Special entities are one thing, but ordinary entities definitely cannot be reasoned with.”
It worked just fine, though?
What suddenly came back to me was Kim Jihoon and Lim Jinsung asking what the teacher and I had said to each other. “Minsu” had shown up and the conversation had been cut short, but it was obvious those two hadn’t understood a word of the exchange between me and the teacher.
Then what, was I suddenly speaking monster language like a native speaker even though I can’t hold a conversation in any world language except Korean—and exam English?
“At Dowon High School, there is only one special entity with whom communication is possible: the chairman. So if what you said is true, then it would mean Kang Iru is very special.”
“...Is being special a good thing? Like, does the ten million won go up to twenty million or something?”
“You’ll obviously receive the modest compensation, and you may also be exempt from military service.”
“Holy shit, seriously?”
“Yes. Because Kang Iru will immediately qualify for a first-rank controller license.”
“What?”
Jeon Jiho was second-rank even though he could erase the memories of more than ten people and manipulate their perception, so wasn’t it completely broken balance to hand me first-rank just because I’d talked a bit with the entities inside the anomaly?
And no matter how amazing military exemption was as a perk, I still had no desire to become a controller when I had no idea what kind of job it even was. It had the word anomaly right there in the name Anomaly Control Department, so obviously it meant living close to anomalies, didn’t it? I’d pass on that.
If I had to choose between the military and anomalies, wouldn’t the military be better?
“I apologize for stopping the recording so abruptly. For now, continue and tell me the rest of what happened.”
Jeon Jiho pressed the record button again, so I swallowed the words I don’t want to be a controller back down. Saying I didn’t want to become a controller while sitting in the controller headquarters felt like a bad idea.
Instead, I told him what had happened while I stayed in the chairman’s office with “Minsu.” I explained that because “Minsu” had been favorably inclined toward me, I had almost ended up becoming a teacher I’d never once been destined to be, but that I had used that favor to rescue Park Jihye from the cafeteria and successfully escape Dowon High School.
Jeon Jiho had stayed calm even when I told him that “Minsu” had sent Kim Jihoon and Lim Jinsung not into reality, but outside the school. But the moment I got to the part where I’d sweet-talked “Minsu,” he immediately stopped the recording.
“This is bad.”
Ever since meeting me, Jeon Jiho’s expression had only grown more and more serious. I could say with confidence that there was no way those lines between his brows could get any deeper.
“The chairman must not come outside the anomaly. If he does, the other entities inside the anomaly will come out too.”
If the tentacled teachers started appearing in reality, then yes, that would definitely be bad. The third-year students who tore teachers apart would obviously be a problem too.
“I know it was not intentional. But the fact that Kang Iru gave him his student ID and even gave him a name is a serious matter.”
“How serious are we talking?”
“If it isn’t handled properly, it becomes a national state of emergency. If we’re unlucky, the country may cease to exist before a state of emergency can even be declared.”
...What?
Am I the ultimate traitor to the nation?