I hung the temporarily issued employee badge around my neck.
Ignoring the unsettled mood of the company, I mixed in with the crowd swarming in front of the elevator.
"They say they still haven't found him?"
"Hey, don't spread any more careless talk. The higher-ups gave a firm warning."
"But it's frightening. Shouldn't they raise our hazard pay?"
"Now, now, if you're frightened you should quit."
I stared blankly at the red numbers descending and furrowed my brow.
So the disappearance works as dopamine for the people who chatter about it as though it were gossip.
Well, only the one it happened to is wronged.
I tugged at the tight collar of my shirt to stretch it, then boarded the elevator mixed in with the others.
The place the missing employee had worked was the fourth floor.
Today I was slated to be that missing man's stand-in.
"Mister Do Hae, good to meet you. You really did come."
Well, would I have said so falsely?
I forced a smile and laughed a hahaha.
I sat at the missing man's desk, roughly the second seat in the third row, turned on the computer, and launched Minesweeper.
I had come as a stand-in, not to actually take on the work.
To endure the tedious hours of holding out like this until eleven at night, there was nothing better.
"I'm counting on you."
"Likewise. I'll see you at clock-out."
After the warm exchange of courtesies passed, I propped my chin up and clicked the mouse.
If clocking out proves possible, that is.
At a glance the entry stage for this Other Side looked finicky, but in truth it was simple.
To recite a few of the conditions.
1. Come in to work at the company.
2. Do not clock out; remain alone in the office.
3. Leave the monitor on for a long time.
4. Earnestly wish to escape the company.
That was about the extent of it.
Come to think of it, is that not most office workers?
Additionally, staying in the same seat as the missing man to raise the odds of being eaten by the Other Side was about all I had prepared.
In the original work, as it was the protagonist's first case, Seo Mok's contributions were many.
Using Seo Mok's trait of being loved by the Other Side, entry was possible on the spot, without needing to come in from morning and kill time.
The starting point was different from the outset.
Which means that even knowing the entry conditions, there was a fair amount for me to take into account.
For instance, something like having to catch wolves first when you were supposed to start with rabbits.
BOOM―!
A mine blew up and it was game over.
How depressing, truly depressing.
This life, ha.
***
Working overtime in the empty office brought to mind the school ghost stories I had heard long ago.
Was there not a fairly famous film, too?
A darkened classroom, corridors, an unidentifiable ghost flitting past in the dim light.
All the brightly lit lamps inside the office went out, and only the green light of the emergency lamp in the corner illuminated things.
The monitor, on which I had just broken my record for Minesweeper's expert level, flickered and went out a moment ago.
It was the same pattern as the disappearance scene I had seen on the CCTV.
"Darker than I expected."
I had already been eaten by the Other Side, and this Other Side stayed in a blackout the entire time until you escaped.
My eyes adjusted to the pitch-dark interior quickly.
Gauging my position by the emergency lamp's light, I got up from the chair.
"Mister Smith, we had better meet quickly."
Unlike the finicky entry conditions, the method of escaping this place was simple.
The only condition, utterly ordinary, was that you could get out by clocking out with your card.
However, the problem was―
―THUD.
A heavy, dull sound that would not be heard in an ordinary office rang through the floor.
Enough to send ripples through the untouched glass of water left on the office desk.
Welcome to the escape action game in which you must clock out while avoiding the monsters that appear all the way down to the first floor, dear player.
―It felt like an effect warning me exactly that.
From the office supplies I took a usable utility knife and a pair of scissors.
I had received a dagger from Ichi and brought it along, but since there was no telling what might happen along the way, it was better to take anything usable as a weapon.
Gauging the monster's regularly sounding footsteps, I scanned my surroundings.
Perhaps because of the peculiarity that the building's structure did not change, identifying things was manageable with only the emergency lamps I had noted on the way in.
"I hope he's hiding somewhere good......."
In this Other Side, time flowed one to one with reality.
In the original work, Smith was found by the protagonist's party a week after he went missing.
It was only day three now, so this was the timing when he would be knocking about somewhere.
"Let's not meet in the rooftop garden."
Smith's movements had not been properly shown, since the early focus was fixed on the protagonist.
He was said to have rambled and dashed about all over, but even that was hidden behind speech bubbles and could not be seen properly.
Leaving the office, quiet apart from the vibration heard in the distance, I took out the transceiver I had brought.
The Other Side transceiver, developed by the Styx Company and actively used by the Ability Office, was a machine that connected reality and the Other Side.
It was still at the research stage and only allowed contact closer to one-way notification than to mutual communication, so it had not been commercialized.
"Entry confirmed. The rescue subject has not yet been located. I intend to enter the locations shortlisted as candidates. Over."
In an Other Side where time flowed one to one, as here, it had its own usefulness.
Because it was a cheat that let Ichi, no doubt idling in reality, know at once whether I lived or died, whether I had found the missing man or killed him.
In the not-distant future the Ability Office, an early investor, would hit the jackpot with this item and gain breathing room in its finances, but that is not what matters now.
After a short wait, the transceiver's screen changed and a blue light came on.
It was an affirmative sign that my transmission had arrived and been confirmed.
It was merely a light conveyed in blue and red, yet I could almost hear Ichi's laugh.
"It's always the field staff who suffer, suffer."
The first thing I saw upon leaving the office was the elevator.
And next, the half-open door to the emergency stairwell.
"I wondered why the fourth-floor monster wasn't around......."
I clicked my tongue.
I turned on the flashlight I had brought for Smith and shone it beyond the stairs.
Only where the light fell did the volume of the space reveal itself, pale.
The stair railing behind the door was half crumpled, and traces of deep gouging and breakage remained on the floor.
"Ngh......."
The elevator could not be used unless the conditions were met, so there was no choice, but.
"Ah, I really don't want to go in."
A monster inhabited the emergency stairwell inside the Other Side.
That one is the more bearable. The problem was that being sandwiched, with the fourth-floor monster included, was a bit much for still-low-level me to handle.
"Please, I hope he bolted downward."
The places that could be picked out as survival zones from the original work were the third-floor lounge and the CEO's office, and, though I hated to include it, the rooftop garden.
In the original work, Smith was found in the rooftop garden.
And that could only be the worst case, since one must not forget that we can escape only by clocking out with the card on the first floor.
Loaded with worry, I spread out my detection ability.
So far the only person eaten by this Other Side was Smith, so it could be called hopeful.
If he had moved on instinct he would have bolted downward, met the monster, and left the emergency stairwell.
At the far edge of my broadly spreading senses, I felt a faint heartbeat.
"Oh dear. Smith."
I glared at the stairs leading down, then turned the light upward.
At the top of the stairs, a pitch-black liquid was flowing thickly along the railing.
This building was used in its entirety by the one firm.
It was a seven-story building, and the CEO's office was also on the seventh floor.
Smith was holding out on that very seventh floor, curled up.
"So he didn't flee to escape the fourth-floor monster."
Smith, heading down, had met the stairwell monster, turned around, and gone up.
Consumed by terror, Smith returned as if by instinct to the familiar space of the fourth floor, and there he met the monster that dwelled on the fourth floor.
Dragging his exhausted body, Smith went up, occupied the CEO's office, whose security was excellent in its own way, and held out for three days.
"So that's why he was found in the rooftop garden."
Since it has come to this, the plan changes.
"Reporting a plan revision. The rescue subject's location is confirmed, but for the sake of safe survival I intend to secure a survival route before beginning the rescue. Over."
This time the blue light came on quite quickly.
Smith is an ordinary person.
Clocking out while dragging baggage along and protecting it from monsters would not help anyone survive.
"He'll be alive four more days anyway, so let him hold out on his own a while longer."
I kneaded my stiff nape and stepped into the emergency stairwell without hesitation.
There are no monsters in the CEO's office.
The fourth-floor monster he had dragged along would be in the stairwell, or in the corridor outside the CEO's office.
Before that, dealing with the stairwell monster first is desirable.
I shone the light down the stairs rather than up and drew a breath.
The hard, gloomy atmosphere grated on my nerves, but it was also a familiar feeling.
Just then.
【Are you that little shit?】
The moment I entered the stairwell and settled on a direction, a voice whispered at my ear.
That is bait.
Hearing a human voice in an unfamiliar situation, most survivors feel glad even at curses.
The protagonist, too, was hooked by that cursing at first.
Seo Mok had a hard time of it.
【You're the one who spread that filthy rumor, aren't you? Right?】
The mechanically altered, flat voice made it hard to tell the sex.
Because it was vague and had its pronunciation smeared as though drowned.
The wheezing static mixed in between breaths was all that revealed any emotion.
【Hsskk―sss― The person who died because of you doesn't even register with you, does he?】
Even as I came down half a flight and turned a corner, I stared straight ahead and did not turn my head.
【Are you ignoring me right now? Tsss―zzzz― You're the same then as now. You hypocrite. Disgusting.】
When I did not react, the level of its ranting rose steadily.
Indeed, why do people commit things others must not see or hear in emergency stairwells with no defenses whatsoever?
That is exactly why monsters like this pop out and bother you.
【You know what? That little shit said until the very end that it wasn't you.】
【All that pretending to be good, and behind their back you were thinking of cutting them loose, weren't you?】
【But I saw it all. What you were doing.】
This is why an Other Side that only scrapes at emotions is not to my taste.
Above all, an Other Side that had eaten an entire building was formed from the tangled thoughts of every sort of person who had worked at the company, so it had turned all the more emotional.
'Ah......, it's locked?'
The door to the third-floor lounge, where food could be secured and a relatively safe monster dwelled, was locked.
I remembered the guard not being that diligent; it was a shame.
In the original work it was a trick that had gone undiscovered because Seo Mok started from the first-floor lobby.
I laughed awkwardly and ruffled my hair.
It was a bastard I had to take down anyway, but a little time to prepare myself would have been nice.
"Ahahaha."
I gave up and gripped the flashlight in my mouth.
What can be done; this is my fate.
The instant I turned to look behind me, I swung the dagger with its cold chill running through it.
CLANG―!
The crisp noise of metal striking metal rang out through the whole stairwell.
Sparks flew for an instant and the bastard's full form came into view.
A red necktie hanging to the floor, a face like a white glass marble with both eyes smeared pitch-black, hair honed sharp enough to put steel needles to shame, and above all, eight arms to start with and no legs, floating in midair.
This is exactly why I had not wanted to come in here.
The monsters here were all lumps of iron.