Chapter 150: Joint Investigation (4)

After that, the meeting began in earnest.

Most of the discussion focused on how they would enter the cruise ship ghost story and the rules that had already been confirmed.

Kurosaki was curious about how they knew so much even about this particular ghost story.

“......You could call it a trade secret.”

Fortunately, Ju-hee cut off his curiosity with a suitably vague answer.

As far as Su-myeon was concerned, the best thing to do was simply shrug and move straight on to the next topic.

“How much of what we requested is going to be accepted?”

When Su-myeon asked Rachel, she answered on behalf of the American side.

“We’ve already submitted a cooperation request regarding the vessel. As a precaution, all passenger reservations will be canceled due to an issue with the ship, and only the minimum necessary crew and the agents entering the ghost story will be allowed aboard.”

The problem was that the cruise ship happened to belong to an American company.

But thanks to that, it seemed they would fortunately be able to enter under controlled conditions.

They were scheduled to board three days later.

“Is everything all right on the Japanese side regarding the waters as well?”

“Yes. Once the cruise follows its route from Korean waters into Japanese waters that day, our side will begin escorting it immediately.”

On top of that, the cruise route itself ran from Korea to Japan.

That meant they would be prepared even if something happened, so the external factors had more or less been dealt with.

Everything else concerned abnormalities inside the ghost story.

And those were, quite literally, abnormalities that could never all be accounted for no matter how much they thought about them.

The meeting could probably end around here.

Su-myeon checked the time and realized that lunchtime had long since passed.

Should he ask them to eat together or not?

While he was wondering about that, Rachel suddenly asked,

“By the way, I saw a little girl walking around. Who is she?”

It did not exactly seem like a place where children were forbidden....

Rachel sounded worried that perhaps she should have made the girl leave, and Su-myeon hesitated.

“Ah....”

How should he explain this....

No, before that, did he even need to explain?

He glanced toward Ju-hee, and she gave him a faintly negative look and gesture, as though saying there was no need to tell them.

“You don’t need to worry about her. She lost her home because of a ghost-story incident, so we’re letting her stay here for a while.”

It was not technically a lie.

Explaining the specifics would turn it into far too long a story, so this much was probably just right.

“For now, assuming you enter this time and successfully make it back out, you should still be able to use the Heartphone even after returning to your home countries and entering other ghost stories.”

As they wrapped things up, Ju-hee spoke as though emphasizing, We’re giving you an enormous benefit here!

“Even if people who have entered a ghost story once with Chief Han later enter one separately.”

“Oh, then....”

“If we somehow brought more agents along....”

Rachel and Kurosaki immediately reacted that way, but Ju-hee cut them off firmly.

“No. That won’t work. No more than the two of you.”

When the two looked disappointed, Su-myeon added,

“Causality.”

That single word was enough.

After going through the documents and the meetings, both of them understood the concept well enough to immediately accept it.

“Right. Of course. That was the issue.”

“I see. The additional people entering would each have their own individual causality as well....”

***

Three days later, late at night.

The cruise port in Songdo.

There had been a change in the group originally planned to enter the ghost story: Su-myeon, Rachel, and Kurosaki.

For the absurd reason that Japan had issued an order telling Kurosaki not to attempt entering personally if it could be avoided.

“Well, if that’s what they told you.”

“......I’m sorry.”

That was a problem with the higher-ups.

What authority did Kurosaki himself have over it?

And truthfully, Su-myeon had already felt considerable pressure at the prospect of entering a ghost story while being responsible for two people he barely knew.

In a way, this was actually for the best.

“Team Leader Kang is coming instead, so it’s fine. Agent Rachel and the two of us will go in.”

“I really, truly apologize. I’ll remain at headquarters until you return.”

If they successfully ended the ghost story and came back safely, they were expected to return aboard the ship after it reached Japan.

At the moment, the plan was therefore for them to fly back rather than return to this port.

Apparently that was why Kurosaki intended to remain at headquarters, though Su-myeon wondered whether there was really any need.

Still, Kurosaki said he would feel uncomfortable otherwise, so what could he do?

If that was what he wanted, then so be it.

“Even if I can only learn something from the office, I need to take something back with me. Otherwise, I won’t be able to do anything when I return to Japan.”

Kurosaki looked thoroughly dejected as he spoke, and Su-myeon merely nodded.

If he could go with Han-su instead, Su-myeon was actually grateful.

Han-su, who had heard the news belatedly, joined them, and Kurosaki returned to the office.

The cruise port, with no people coming and going, felt bleak enough to be unsettling.

It was reasonably clean and orderly, yet strangely deserted.

Cruises were still relatively uncommon in Korea to begin with, and every reservation for the ship departing today had been canceled, so it was only natural.

“It already feels like we’ve entered a ghost story.”

Rachel and Han-su seemed to agree with Su-myeon about the strangely empty atmosphere, because they kept looking around as well.

The cruise ship ghost story they were about to enter.

In the game Su-myeon had played, its name had been ‘The Ark of the Golden House.’

The method of entering it was not particularly complicated.

First, they had to board the American-registered vessel, the Siren.

“But don’t people usually avoid naming ships things like this?”

Siren.

Wasn’t that a rather ominous name from a sailor’s perspective?

When Su-myeon asked, Rachel shrugged.

“Apparently the owner pushed it through because he said he didn’t believe in superstitions.”

From Su-myeon’s perspective, the owner himself sounded extremely suspicious.

Could he be someone who had deliberately tried to become a kind of medium, like the owner of Room 404 they had encountered in The Witch’s Forest?

“You shouldn’t underestimate the power of what people hold in their minds like that. You should meet the man personally sometime, just in case.”

Rachel nodded at Su-myeon’s words.

The process of boarding the Siren was quiet and long.

The ship itself was fairly large, and they had to verify their identities with the person managing the vessel before boarding.

Since the process involved a fair amount of walking, maintaining complete silence the entire way made the atmosphere feel somewhat awkward.

With Han-su being his usual taciturn self and refusing to say a word, Su-myeon belatedly managed to start some small talk with Rachel instead.

He began with a very basic question that felt slightly late to ask considering this was already their third meeting.

“By the way, where did you learn Korean?”

Kurosaki was fairly good too, but Rachel in particular spoke with pronunciation almost indistinguishable from a native speaker’s.

“After what happened, I just couldn’t bring myself to go back to an American school.”

Well.

After going through something like that at school....

When Su-myeon nodded, Rachel continued.

“So... I lived in Korea. For about ten years.... I even took the CSAT and went to college here. I got a Grade 1 in Korean.”

“......You might actually be better at Korean than I am.”

“What? What grade did you get?”

“I think keeping that to myself would be better for my dignity.”

Rachel burst out laughing at Su-myeon’s answer.

The tension eased a little, but there was still something strange about the three of them standing alone amid rows of passenger cabins.

“.......”

The cruise ship was luxurious, though slightly old.

Unfortunately, the sight reminded Su-myeon and Han-su of Alice Hotel.

Rachel noticed that the two men’s expressions had worsened in contrast to hers and asked as they headed toward the deck,

“Wouldn’t destroying the ship itself solve the problem?”

“I’m... not sure.”

Su-myeon let out a short sigh, almost like a deep breath, before answering.

“This is only the entrance we’ve discovered. There could be other entrances.”

Su-myeon briefly explained what had happened after they set fire to The Mountain of the Red Cloak, when smoke had risen from locations all across the country.

“So it would probably be better to use an entrance we already know about, go inside, and end the ghost story completely.”

And the same applied even if this happened to be the only entrance.

The ghost story itself already possessed causality.

“Even if we destroy one entrance, it might just create another somewhere else.”

“......I see. I hadn’t thought it through.”

Rachel nodded, appearing to understand Su-myeon’s explanation.

While they were talking, the three of them finally reached the deck.

Rachel swallowed dryly from the tension.

“......Now we really begin.”

***

At Governance headquarters, they always prepared for worst-case scenarios involving field teams entering ghost stories.

“We’ll head out in advance.”

“Contact us immediately if anything happens.”

At the office, Young-cheol and Jae-hak were preparing to leave for Japan ahead of time.

They needed to account for the possibility that Su-myeon might return to reality while the cruise ship was already in Japan, especially if he came back with serious injuries.

“What if they can’t come back quickly and it takes several days?”

Mi-ae asked as she watched the two doctors leave the office with troubled expressions.

As always, Mi-ae was the one who said aloud what everyone else was thinking but could not bring themselves to voice.

“That won’t happen.”

Hwi-yeon dismissed Mi-ae’s concern with blind certainty.

As always, there was nothing the people at the office could do but wait and believe that Su-myeon would succeed again this time.

Ju-hee looked at Kurosaki, who was sitting dejectedly in the office, and spoke to him.

If he was going to sit there like that, he might as well work.

“For now, we believe this ghost story is Isolation-class, but depending on the type of ghost story, there are situations where we have to change the request to nationwide manpower deployment.”

The people remaining in the office had to make those judgments on behalf of the field team and request cooperation from the relevant organizations.

At Ju-hee’s explanation, Kurosaki perked up slightly and looked through the documents he had been given again.

Among them was a classification chart.

The Governance broadly divided ghost stories into three scales.

1. Isolation: A ghost story with a clearly defined entry route.

2. Transference: A ghost story that can be entered from anywhere as long as the conditions are met.

3. Erosion: Believed to be the ultimate objective of ghost stories—to imitate reality and eventually become part of reality itself.

“May I ask what criteria you used to divide them this way?”

“These are classifications we established internally after the recent incident.”

Depending on the type, the amount of outside manpower required could vary dramatically.

For example, White Night Land and The Witch’s Forest were Isolation-type ghost stories with extremely limited points of entry and exit.

In those cases, deploying agents only to the identified locations was enough to manage the situation.

But Transference-type ghost stories like Alice Hotel were the real problem.

“We needed terminology to define what happened during the recent disaster. And if another similar type of ghost story appears, we need to establish response guidelines as well.”

Because of that, the higher-ups in Korea were currently working hard to create procedures for ending Transference-type ghost stories.

If something like this happened again, there would hopefully be less chaos than last time.

“Would it be all right if we used this as a reference too?”

“...Of course.”

The materials had been given to him precisely because they did not mind that.

Still, Ju-hee found herself wondering whether Japan could even make use of a classification system like this yet.

She had heard that they had not even systematized things like entry routes.

But in any case, Kurosaki had come all the way here because he hoped to someday end the ghost stories in his own country as well.

If his hope was that Japan could someday build a system like Korea’s, she could understand that.

“Don’t be too disappointed. Ghost stories are dangerous. Even just taking what you learn here back with you should be enough to help you later.”

At Ju-hee’s attempt to comfort him, Kurosaki nodded.

But Mi-ae watched the two of them with a peculiar look in her eyes.

For some reason, Mi-ae sensed something suspicious about Kurosaki.