Bailonz Street 13-Chapter 245.1
Author’s note:
※ CAUTION ※
*This chapter deals with the subject of suicide.
The corpse’s bluish, swollen-looking feet hung right above my head.
Though the body was clearly desiccated, the feet were strangely puffy, as if swollen.
Sway.
It brushed against my cheek.
“……”
“Roe?”
“Yes.”
I’m going insane.
Every nerve in my body wanted to curl up and shut down, but I couldn’t bring myself to close my eyes.
‘If anyone here dared to say they couldn’t handle this and started crying, I’d almost admire them…’
No one—absolutely no one—looked scared. Everyone else was calm and collected. Could I really be the only one losing my marbles here?
‘It’s not like this is my first day exploring Darkness!’
And this is an annihilation-sanctioned Disaster, for god’s sake.
‘I’ve got to pull my weight somehow… anything…!’
“Allow me to check.”
Resisting the urge to cling to their pants and beg them to count me as a tag-along deadweight if I offered up my wiki information as a bribe, I clenched my teeth and reached out my hand.
I examined the corpse that had bumped into my head (wahh please, please).
The fact that I have to touch this is enough to make me faint, and just remembering how I once sat calmly right next to a corpse with its eyes gouged out back when I was 130666 makes me feel even closer to passing out… but my mind still keeps working.
‘…Cold.’
At least touching it didn’t trigger any malignant contagion, suicidal impulses, or hallucinations.
“Just a corpse, huh.”
“…Yes.”
But there were far too many.
I saw a flicker of frustration cross Agent Choi’s face as he tried peering through the fog.
“No good. The amulet’s completely ineffective, too. But… one thing’s clear.”
“……”
“You can’t see the end of it with the naked eye. …These trees with bodies hanging from them.”
The dead spared no category. Men and women, young and old.
Countless people filled this forest…
Fear and quiet grief settled over our group.
“Think they’re real corpsess?”
“There’s a chance it’s all staged… but if this city truly suffered a Disaster, it’s probable that they’re real.”
“Our Bronze here is way too blunt with the civilian.”
“It’s finee. What can we do? They’re already dead. We’ll just try not to end up like that!”
I swallowed down nausea from the sheer scale and forced myself to move.
Most of the bodies’ clothes were dust-caked, as if years had passed.
‘Any useful info…’
“Could we check their hands first? If they’re real corpses, there might be clues about how they died.”
“Already looking, Grapes. Hup.”
Soon, we found something.
The hand of a corpse in a plaid shirt, glasses still perched crookedly.
“…It’s smudged, but there’s writing.”
Words scrawled in pen across the palm.
No one is coming to save us
Seven thousand abandoned
We want to run
But there’s no way out
So we will become trees instead
“……”
The dried pen strokes alone conjured the scene.
‘…They realized rescue wasn’t coming.’
Phones dead, food gone, thousands trapped in the collapsed station.
Outside, some unspeakable catastrophe raging, making escape impossible. No hope that anyone would come.
And so…
“Mm. Still, they chose a pretty quiet way, didn’t theyy. Instead of killing and being killed, they all just died together, rightt?”
“They might’ve been influenced by the Darkness. Or the strangeness itself could’ve been the seed for the Darkness.”
“Aha.”
The Daydream employee’s level tone contrasted sharply with the stiffer expressions of the Disaster Management Bureau’s agents.
But, like veterans, their composure returned quickly.
“…Now that we know what kind of Disaster hit, let’s try to find the information board.”
“Yes.”
After a moment’s debate, we decided not to disturb the hanging corpses unnecessarily and moved on.
Seventeen minutes passed by my phone’s clock.
“Found it.”
An information board emerged at last.
It was a typical public-institution information board. Neat blue letters set between black and yellow borders, appearing damp with the moisture of the fog…
The rules of this ghost story.
Sekwang Station (Forest of Final Moments) Etiquette
1- Please do not break any branches
2- If you stand too close to the screen doors, you will see strange things.
3- If you run near the ticket gates, an exit will appear.
4- Please do not get separated from your group
5- Please do not hang yourself from the trees
6- Those who cause a disturbance in the station are inside the fog.
7- The ■■-bound train no longer stops here.
“Hm. Quite spooky. Don’t you think so, Sir Highborn Geezer?”
“Geezer… Huu. Yes. A typical manual for a supernatural phenomenon.”
Listening to the others, I started deducing the logic of these rules…
“It seems we can classify them by tone.”
If you check whether or not each sentence ends with a period, a pattern emerges.
“It can be divided into the forest and the subway station.”
And the station side reads like instructions or signage, while the forest side reads like direct prohibitions.
“Hm. Maybe there used to be an actual forest outside, and it fused with the stationn?”
“Or the fact that a ‘nearby forest’ affected this station’s identity. Darkness is shaped by human perception, after all.”
While saying this, Assistant Manager Eun Haje tapped the information board lightly.
Thunk— A corpse that had been hanging behind the board slid down and stopped right in front of my face.
“…!”
I nearly swore.
Salt Goblin
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