Episode 546
Hong Gyeong-jun was a person who suffered a lot from his senior.
How many people in their lives have they felt from the moment they first met them that ‘that thing shouldn’t exist’?
Just being around him made me feel rejected, and the things he did were beyond my imagination. I couldn’t understand why he became a police officer. It would be understandable if he were the leader of the criminal organization that detective Hong Kyung-jun was supposed to catch.
Of course, I received a lot from my senior… but it was clear that the process was a tough one.
“….”
And Hong Gyeong-jun was feeling that ominous feeling right now.
“…No matter how much I think about it….”
Lee Jae-heon’s condition didn’t seem to be good.
“Haa….”
Hong Gyeong-jun, who came out to stand guard while the other survivors were resting, covered his itching forehead with his hand.
Jaeheon Lee’s voice, which I heard when I last spoke to the survivors at the concert hall, was still vivid.
‘I said you were my junior.’
That voice. tone of the voice. The tone at the end of a sentence and the pronunciation are strangely neat. A voice that is smooth, but not soft, and pretends to be light, trying to overwhelm and sway the opponent.
It belonged to a senior I put in jail.
“….”
It now belongs to a dead person, and probably belongs to someone who remains like a ghost next to Lee Jae-heon.
“I couldn’t have heard wrong.”
There was no way Hong Gyeong-jun’s intuition was wrong.
“…I wonder what the hell is going on….”
Tuk.
Hong Gyeong-jun, who was leaning against a tree and watching his surroundings, crossed his arms.
I know it’s not good to be distracted like this while standing guard, but I couldn’t help the instinct to organize my thoughts when no one was around.
His fingers tapped his forearm.
‘If I’m not hallucinating, then that’s just my senior’s speaking habit.’
His instructor especially liked the word ‘junior’.
He probably used the title ‘junior’ often before, and his last ‘junior’ seemed to be Hong Gyeong-jun.
‘And Jaeheon Lee doesn’t have anyone he can call his junior.’
In the same context, it was strange that Lee Jae-heon called Jeong In-ho ‘junior’. Between them, who already called each other ‘Manager’ and ‘Assistant Manager Jeong’, it didn’t seem necessary to call them senior or junior.
The fingers that were tapping my forearm soon stopped.
“….”
Hong Gyeong-jun’s brow furrowed and his stiff lips pressed weakly.
‘…If I’m not really possessed, does this explain the situation?’
Hong Gyeong-jun’s hand became so strong that he grabbed his forearm tightly without realizing it.
“…Why on earth is that…”
Although he didn’t know it, his face was pale.
‘Why is that possible?’
gradually.
Cold sweat flows.
The face, which was usually expressionless and without change, became distorted and the pupils narrowed and wandered.
Hong Gyeong-jun, who held his arms tightly, pursed his lips, and lowered his head, looked as if he was frightened.
“Why…”
Hong Gyeong-jun noticed his condition only late, but the strange fear did not go away.
“….”
The dead man came back.
‘…This is ridiculous.’
In fact, the senior was the person who helped destroy Lee Jae-heon to some extent, and the fact that he died like that and remained as a ghost next to Lee Jae-heon. All of that was nonsense, but this was on a whole different level.
why? how? Why did he crawl into Lee Jae-heon’s body?
‘What the hell…’
If my guess that he is possessed is correct, then what on earth is he thinking?
“….”
Hong Gyeong-jun pursed his lips without realizing it.
He slowly collapsed against the tree and sat on the floor, his head still hanging as the headache throbbed at his brain. When I ran my hand down the back of my neck, cold sweat was already forming.
Even though it wasn’t that kind of weather, I suddenly felt cold.
“…Shouldn’t it be like this?”
It was absolutely impossible for a dead person to enter the body of a living person.
“If you do this, that person…”
Doesn’t it feel like an evil spirit?
“….”
Hong Gyeong-jun frowned and closed his eyes while keeping his mouth shut.
To be honest, he didn’t know much about his shooter.
Did you have a family? I don’t think there were any, but I wonder if there were any distant relatives. Have you ever been in a relationship?
Why did you give me the nickname ‘junior’? How did you become a police officer? What happened to the detective again? What on earth were you thinking about that made life so burdensome?…
“Why don’t you tell me?”
Hong Gyeong-jun covered his face with both hands.
“I am so confused because I usually shut up…”
The senior refused to have deep interactions with others.
The rejection was clear, but his colleagues tried not to be offended by the line. He’s had enough interactions without even going into that. Even though he refused to have deep interactions, he was a person who tried to be unusually friendly.
However, Hong Gyeong-jun always wanted to understand ‘senior’. When I first met him, I knew he was a dangerous person, and later on, I felt like he was going to kill me one way or another.
“….”
Nevertheless, ‘Senior’ did not tell me anything properly.
Maybe that’s why I couldn’t guess his true intentions as he became a ghost and entered Lee Jae-heon.
If he had had a more proper conversation before he died, something might have changed, but for Hong Gyeong-jun, who was always treated like a foolish dog by his senior, it was only confusing.
“…It’s still trash.”
He sees everyone in the world like a puppy that he has to take care of.
Look at it like a balloon that will burst if you hold it in your hand.
“Still…”
Hong Gyeongjun’s words were cut off.
“….”
I know that my senior is not a good person.
So, he could have truly become an evil spirit and taken over Lee Jae-heon’s body, or he could be planning something even more vicious.
Anyway, since he is a person whose true intentions are unknown, I cannot dare to imagine his impure intentions…
Hong Gyeong-jun laughed with a pale face.
“…You must be crazy.”
He mocked himself.
It was nice to see the dead man back.
“Ha…”
Hong Gyeong-jun, who was once again wiping his face with both hands, suddenly stiffened.
“….”
Ah.
“….”
Wait a minute.
“….”
There is silence.
After a while, Hong Gyeong-jun removed his hand from his face and looked into the air.
“…I…”
A small mutter.
Through the angled glasses, the cavity repeatedly contracted and expanded, slowly raising my gaze from below to the front.
Hong Gyeong-jun blinked as he stared into the great darkness in the empty park.
My gaze turned to one side without realizing it.
“….”
Following my unfounded intuition, I headed in the direction of Mirror Lake.
“What…”
What did I call him?
“….”
What was his name?
* * *
The woman laughed in the sparkling water.
“It was bad.”
White, thin fingers move.
* * *
Hong Gyeong-jun laughed with a pale face.
“…You must be crazy.”
He mocked himself.
It was nice to see the dead man back.
“Ha…”
Hong Gyeong-jun, who was once again wiping his face with both hands, raised his head and looked straight ahead.
The park was still quiet and quiet. Perhaps because the final boss of this area was killed once, the monsters did not go on a rampage and all just defended their own territory.
‘… It was said at Eonhak High School as well… It certainly seems true that the presence or absence of the final boss affects the difficulty of the area.’
Hong Gyeong-jun, who came up with the hypothesis, suddenly rolled his eyes to one side.
“….”
There was no reason.
I think it was probably in the direction of Mirror Lake.
“…Am I perhaps thirsty?”
Feeling something uneasy, Hong Gyeong-jun got up from his seat.
“Maybe it was because I couldn’t sleep…”
He moved away from the tree he was leaning against.
It was soon shift time.
* * *
“….”
The white hand behind the tree that Hong Gyeong-jun was leaning on soon disappeared.
* * *
Seo Jang-hwa and Park Da-young looked at the map with serious faces.
“…Do you see something?”
“…I can’t see anything.”
“If you want to give a fucking hint, you have to give it properly.”
“My words.”
The two were standing in the hallway in front of the ‘Sea Treasure Hall’, looking for hints about the treasure chest.
However, the stamp map did not have a proper explanation for anything. There were parts that looked like a child’s scribbles scribbled haphazardly, and there were also many decorations that looked like they had been created by a poor design company.
“I think the hints from the friends at the stream were easy to recognize.”
Dayoung Park sighed deeply.
“It was clearly written in the alphabet…”
“What could even a wet suit expect from a map with a moving fish decoration?”
“That too, but isn’t this a bit over the line?”
Seo Jang-hwa scratched the back of his neck nervously at the high school student’s complaint.
“No shit… I’m going to turn around now that someone has died.”
The only information they knew was that ‘you can choose the winner among treasure chests that look identical on the outside with a very low probability.’ And the only thing that matters is that if you choose to fail, you will receive an unknown penalty.
‘So I was wondering if there might be something on the map.’
Seo Jang-hwa’s face crumpled.
“What kind of hint is there here?”
It wasn’t that I was completely out of sync.
The seal marking the ‘Sea Treasure Hall’ was filled with tiny circles so dense that they were crowded inside. There were exactly 29 black circles of a certain size.
And the number of treasure chests that Seo Jang-hwa looked down from the glass wall was 29, which matched the number of circles.
“If you look at the numbers alone, it definitely seems to mean a treasure chest…”
“I can’t tell them apart at all.”
“If one of them was white instead of black, or something like that, I would try something like Crayon Shin-chan, but I really can’t figure it out at all. “What should I do?”
After thinking for a while, Park Da-young spoke carefully.
“…Could it be that there is a hint that only the map owner can recognize?”
“The map owner… Minhong?”
“We may not be able to bring Minhong here, but there might be other traces that only Minhong can see. Can’t I go to the concert hall for a moment? It’s not that far from here…”
“That makes sense, too.”
Haven’t we already received information from the concert hall team that ‘the child has a relatively high probability of finding the correct answer to the treasure box’?
Considering that the aquarium is especially considerate of children, it was a somewhat credible guess.
“Besides, why are the drinks provided at the cafe in the middle only for children… They said they could tell whether it was hot chocolate or green tea latte. “If you think about it that way, there might be something that only kids can see.”
“… When I sold Jae-heon Lee’s map and received the product, I said that only the owner, Jae-heon Lee, was able to open the box, so it wasn’t necessarily the kids… So it seems like there might be something that only the owner of the map can check.”
When these assumptions were made, ‘if they are children who are the recipients of the aquarium’s consideration’ and ‘if they are the owners of the stamped map’, the conclusion was ultimately the same. The idea was to ask Choi Min-hong directly for his opinion.
The problem is that time is not that leisurely.
“Jung Eun-woo was definitely turning into a monster.”
“…The water in the box where Da-hoon is trapped will soon fill up.”
“…If you’re going to go, you have to do it as quickly as possible…”
Can the two of them hold out until then?
Neither Jung Eun-woo nor Park Da-hoon’s time was that leisurely.
“….”
“….”
Even though this place is in front of the ‘Sea Treasure Hall’, it will definitely take quite some time to get to the concert venue.
“…I understand first of all, I can’t just sit still like this. Since the conclusion has been reached, if we move as quickly as possible… then something will work out.”
Seo Jang-hwa spoke half-gibberish and roughly scratched the back of his neck again.
“First of all, it would be best to ask Eunwoo Jeong to come back.”
“Yes, yes… I heard that if you keep wearing a wetsuit, you will turn into a monster faster. “I think it would be better to come out and take off the ring.”
“Dayoung stay here, she will be back soon.”
“Have a safe trip.”
“Oh, you too, be careful.”
Seo Jang-hwa entered the Sea Treasure Hall, relieved by Park Da-young, who willingly let me go.
The cold water wrapped around my body and I waded through water with an ambiguous water pressure that made it easy to walk.
Seo Jang-hwa’s heart was pounding with anxiety because he left alone a person who was already turning into a monster.
‘…Nothing should have happened.’
I had a rough idea of how bad a person Eunwoo Jeong was, but I didn’t want to see the person who helped us turn into a monster and die.
At least Seo Jang-hwa didn’t hate Jeong Eun-woo that much.
In her opinion, Jung Eun-woo was an asshole, but he wasn’t someone who didn’t try his best. Although he couldn’t deny that his methods were wrong, he wasn’t hypocritical.
‘No, it doesn’t have to be that way.’
It was natural not to want to see the person who mixed words die or get hurt.
“….”
So Seo Jang-hwa stood in the water for a long time, looking beyond the glass wall.
“….”
Her diligent limbs, which had been moving quickly through the water toward the ladder, stopped.
Seo Jang-hwa just blinked his eyes in the large water flowing with strange water pressure.
“….”
Feeling the sensation of water worms crawling into your ears, nose, and brain….
“….”
Bugle.
A small drop leaked from the mouth.
There was no one beyond the glass wall.
“….”
No one.
(Continued in the next part)
