Got Dropped into a Ghost Story, Still Gotta Work

The wiki updated.

Hanbam Station (Hanbit Library)

A subway station of Se-gwang Special City, refurbished into a public library.

Before the Day of Disaster, this district originally held an industrial high school and residential blocks, but it was redeveloped as library grounds during the Special City project.

The library, not yet officially opened, had remained locked for years except for a small section for local citizens. On the Day of Disaster, it opened its doors and generously shared its knowledge and information.

Do not make yourself regret this.

...Suitably ominous for an urban legend.

But still.

“At least it didn’t say anything about people dying horribly.”

“Yes.”

When I passed on the “info for this station,” the team showed faint relief.

“The phrasing about ‘sharing knowledge and information’ does nag at me though... pulling information out of the dark isn’t always a good thing. Hm.”

“If it didn’t leave a bad taste, it wouldn’t be an urban legend, Deputy.”

“That’s true, Osori.”

In the first place, this project team existed on Ho Yuwon’s mandate to investigate Se-gwang Special City, so there might be plenty here we needed.

And also—

“There’s another advantage.”

“Hm?”

“It looks like there won’t be an entry fee.”

“...!”

Urban legends are shaped by the motifs behind them, usually following their # Nоvеlight # laws....

“Right. Public libraries don’t charge admission.”

“Yes.”

We climbed the station stairs.

After a forest hung with corpses and a casino that stripped your body, no one expected much from whatever waited in the concourse.

Even the Security Team had been briefed.

Maybe it’ll just be a station plastered with A4 sheets.

But when we stepped up into the space above the platform—

“...!”

...we found a sight none of us had anticipated.

“...A cave?”

From the top of the stairs stretched a small cave, lined wall to wall with books.

My god.

Like an illustration from some classic fantasy novel.

An artificial cave made of bookshelves.

Except its materials belonged to a twenty-first-century library.

Synthetic panels, engineered wood, aluminum racks fitted together like a puzzle into a tunnel of shelves.

Were these pulled from different stacks...?

Small mood lamps cast a warm, ruddy glow across the aisles, the packed shelves forming shadowed corridors that climbed to the ceiling—

Bookshelves stacked up to the ceiling!

[Ah, it calls to mind a surrealist painting.]

[At the same time, doesn’t it feel like some hidden adventure site from an old tale? A mysterious space waiting for your expedition, though you’ve come at rather the wrong time!]

My thoughts exactly.

The clash with the mundane station facilities below only made the dissonance stronger.

“Wait here.”

Lee Jahaeon tied a rope around his waist, advanced into the shelf-tunnel, rounded a corner... and returned unharmed.

“No traps detected.”

“Whew.”

We resolved to go in.

Instead of rope, we tied a string to the stair railing, unspooling it as we moved.

Those with field masks donned them again, just in case.

And—

“Brought yours too.”

“...Yes.”

Deputy Eunhaje smiled as he handed Park Minseong his old team mask.

In a low, hoarse voice, Park accepted it, putting on the familiar badger mask.

Something in my chest tightened.

Which makes only one person here without a mask...

“I’ll manage. This is fine.” freewebnovel.cσ๓

The Guard Captain refused the spare identification-dulling mask Jahaeon offered, and instead pulled out a worn surgical mask to cover his face.

...

[Pitiful!]

In any case, we completed preparations and entered the “library cave.”

“Let’s err on the side of caution—best to use writing for communication.”

“Because libraries demand silence?”

“Yes.”

We carried pens and paper, and advanced in silence.

At the rear, I slowly unwound the string, making sure our path back was clear.

Step, step...

The aisle of shelves twisted on.

Sometimes narrow forks appeared, but most were just tiny crawlspaces far too small to use.

—Shall we establish a rule to always turn right?

—Yes.

At any suspicious openings, Jahaeon deliberately walked ahead of us, shielding the group.

We advanced, paused, scanned.

And the only irregularity I noticed was this:

Between the tightly packed stacks, in a small gap with no books—

There was a window.

“...!”

I carefully checked it.

Outside was pitch-black.

Nothing at all could be seen, as if it were midnight under heavy clouds with no streetlights.

But there, beyond—one point of light.

Se-gwang Industrial High School.

The nameplate at the school gate.

Visible, inexplicably.

I tried straining for a better look past my reflection, but stopped when Jahaeon’s hand gripped the back of my neck.

“...”

—Stop.

...Yes.

Right. In an urban legend, obsessive curiosity was suicide.

Unless I wanted to add another bad ending to the collection.

No matter how many times you wake in reality after dying here, a disappearance is forever. That kind of digging was Research Team madness.

So I gave the group a brief report and we moved on—

Carrying that unease with me.

“...”

“...”

Yet still, no other signs appeared.

No markers, no floor numbers, not even exit signs.

...How big is this place?

The endlessness itself wore down your sense of reality, stifling and dreamlike, overwhelming.

Like being lost in a strange dream.

And also—

—Why no ‘Library Rules’ posted anywhere?

It had been at least forty minutes since we started the exploration, but oddly, there were no instructions, no warnings.

Not even bloodstained shelves or warped titles on spines.

Just the ceaseless tunnel of shelves stacked to the ceiling.

—Osori, you take the lead and pull a book off the shelf.

—That’s a joke, Deputy?

—Of course it is.

Right. We couldn’t afford to prod at random.

At least Park Minseong was calming, the surge of tension and elation fading into practiced composure, almost like he was back in his old D Team days.

As if... he’d gone back to the past.

...

Which only made me more conscious of the Guard Captain.

Still shuffling along, eyes on the floor.

I nearly bumped into him because of it.

But he still stared at the ground.

...!

—Do you see something down there?

“...”

Slowly, in that shaky handwriting, the Guard Captain scrawled:

—Looks like maybe.

I instinctively lowered my gaze.

Through the gloom, under the shadows of shelves and books, faint lines traced across the floor—

Some strange pattern.

“...!”

I tapped a teammate’s shoulder, asking them to pause, then crouched and shifted a book aside to uncover it fully.

Under the dim glow of the lamps and the shadows—

The pattern revealed itself.

“......”

What is this?

For a moment I thought maybe the shadows kept me from seeing it properly—

but when I crouched lower, I realized.

A trick.

...It’s the angle of view!

I bent down again at once. I needed a sharper angle, enough that the pattern compressed vertically.

Leaning all the way down, pressing my head nearly to the floor and lifting only my eyes—

I saw it.

Do not make the sound of footsteps.

“......!!”

A shock ran through me.

A wolf mask. A suit. An unmistakably company employee standing there, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

“...Who....”

My throat tightened, words refusing to come out.

“Relax.” The man tilted his head, voice calm but deliberate. “I’m not your foe. At least, not unless you make me one.”

The sight was uncanny. Not an illusion, not the flickering silhouette I’d just chased—this was someone real.

A wolf mask. A tailored black suit, tie neatly fixed. Not the ragged survivors’ attire of exploration. He carried himself like someone still on shift in the office aboveground.

“You really shouldn’t go off alone chasing shadows.” The wolf mask tilted slightly, eyeholes glinting faintly with the glow of a nearby lamp. “That’s how people vanish in here.”

My chest tightened at the way he said it.

“...Sa...seum?”

“Deer. Your mask.” He tapped his own wolf muzzle lightly. “We all end up being called by the faces we wear, sooner or later.”

I couldn’t answer. My fingers tightened on the notebook I’d been using to write instead of speak.

The others—where were the others?

“Don’t worry,” he said, as if reading my unease. “You’ll meet them again. This place... bends. Folds. As long as you don’t break the rules, you’ll loop back together.”

I forced myself to steady my breath. “...Which... rules?”

The wolf mask chuckled quietly.

“The ones you’ve already seen. The ones you bowed to, on the floor.”

His voice dropped, almost conspiratorial.

“But there’s one more they never print on those neat little sheets.”

I stiffened. “...What is it?”

The wolf leaned closer.

“Never answer when someone calls your real name.”

The words burrowed straight down my spine like ice water.

“....”

He straightened again, brushing invisible dust from his lapel. “If you forget that, you won’t make it out of here as you.”

And then, without waiting for me to reply—

The wolf mask employee slipped between the shelves and was gone, leaving only the faint rustle of pages in his wake.

“....”

My hand trembled as I scribbled the words down before they could fade from my memory.

Never answer when someone calls your real name.