Free Web NovelWhat... what was this situation?
Wait.
So right now, the B-Team leader is next to me—
and over there, down that aisle—
the Guard Captain and the Golden Mascot.
I’m standing here,
but “I” am standing there, too.
...What?
A hallucination caused by the library ghost story?
If I had to reason it out, the untainted “past”—the B-Team leader’s side—should be the illusion.
But a person who can physically subdue a student can’t be just a hallucination, can they—no...
......
I swallowed.
...Brown.
Ah, my friend calls for me.
I shifted my focus.
To the yellow cat-like mascot with branch-shaped horns—
the “Golden Mascot.”
Is that your friend?
Does it recognize me as itself?
Oh, perhaps! But right now, I’m with you, Mr. Roe Deer!
An evasive answer.
Ha.
And meanwhile, the B-Team leader beside me was already studying the two figures and calmly writing me a note:
They’re not human, most likely.
Entities belonging to this library ghost story. Let’s keep observing.
“......”
So he’d decided they weren’t people.
Technically, that was true.
Even if both were tangible, neither could be called “ordinary humans.”
“Uh... should I carry the yarn...?”
Tha nk yo u.
“...Yeah.”
The Guard Captain picked up the skein, and his pupils flared yellow.
He really does look terrifying seen from here...
From the corner, the two figures spoke in low voices.
Just by appearance and manner of speech, they were both unmistakably abnormal.
But—
I kept my eyes fixed on the Guard Captain in the wrinkled dental mask, forcing myself not to turn toward the Wolf Leader.
Because if—
If the B-Team leader realized that the “entity” he had just classified as nonhuman was actually his future self—
what would happen?
“......”
A bad feeling crawled up my spine.
Better to keep them from facing each other.
I kept my expression neutral and wrote another line:
Yes. Likely a lost entity wandering inside the library.
Makes sense.
No outright lies.
He’d notice.
“So... we’ll follow the yarn to find where it ends...?”
Hold on to it.
We’ll find the others.
“...All right.”
They finished their talk and began to move again.
The Golden Mascot’s words—so exactly like something I would say—sent a chill up my back.
But priority: prevent any direct confrontation.
We’ll abandon the yarn search here. Pull back and investigate another section—
And then—
“That smell...”
...!
I looked up.
The Guard Captain’s long, black, clawed hand had shot out, clutching my jacket collar.
The Wolf Leader yanked me free in the same instant, leaving only the fabric in those claws.
“......”
“......”
“...Uh.”
Caught.
The Guard Captain flexed his fingers, then looked back and forth between me and the Golden Mascot.
“This...”
It’s okay.
The Golden Mascot bounded forward, standing between us.
Its pebble-black eyes fixed on me.
We’ve done this before.
What...
Ah.
A flicker of memory—
The VIP Shopping Trip in Space Mall.
When all my contaminations had manifested around me, sitting side by side.
“......”
Right?
So this... this was my contamination and my untainted self split into separate bodies?
That was how the Mascot saw it?
But that’s strange.
I had many contaminations.
If the one that had consumed the most of my ego manifested, it should’ve been the Hungry Hangman’s kindergarten teacher form.
And if it was the strongest shape that appeared—
...Then it should’ve been 130666.
My real-world self.
[Oh, now I’m curious about the selection criteria.]
Worry crept in for the others—where had they ended up?
But the immediate problem was—
The Guard Captain and the B-Team leader had seen each other.
“Looks like you know each other.”
“......”
“......”
Tall frame, clean suit, hair neatly combed, face hidden behind the wolf mask.
Thin body, stooped posture, wrinkled guard’s uniform, crushed cap, unkempt hair, rumpled dental mask.
“What’s going on, Agent Yong?”
My mind went blank watching them stand face-to-face.
Did he realize?
The Guard Captain surely had.
But Jay—
He stood motionless for a moment, then pulled his cap down and bowed his head.
......
Whew.
If that was the case—
“Team Leader, this is... a security-team employee.”
I rose, swallowed, and gestured politely toward the Guard Captain.
“My colleague.”
The Wolf Leader’s gaze lingered.
“But you pretended not to know him.”
Whew.
“To my knowledge, the Security Division didn’t exist in your era, sir. It was established later, so I thought you wouldn’t recognize it.”
“Mm.”
“I was afraid you’d be suspicious...”
I exhaled.
“Yes. I tried to bluff. I wasn’t sure how much you’d believe—and, frankly, you scare me a little.”
“Me?”
“Yes.”
That was entirely honest.
“Objectively speaking, the situation is suspicious, isn’t it?”
A short laugh.
The wolf-mask’s eyes narrowed slightly—
whether smiling or not, I couldn’t tell.
I swallowed again.
“So, since they’ve found the yarn too, I thought we could secure an exit first and meet again later.”
“Mm.”
The masked eyes scanned both figures.
The Guard Captain still kept his head bowed under the cap.
The Wolf Leader’s gaze lingered a little longer on the more conspicuous Mascot.
“All right.”
“......”
“Let’s move together. We’ll use your thread, Agent Yong.”
“Yes, sir.”
My heart shrank to a pebble.
Let’s walk.
We followed the thread.
The ball of yarn I’d dropped when I entered Segwang Industrial High was still lying there.
And logically, since the other end had been tied outside the Hanbit Library, it should lead us toward the exit.
“......”
Even as we walked, the Wolf Leader spoke in his calm, almost casual tone—
addressed to the Golden Mascot.
“So, you’re a security employee too?”
Nope.
I’m the resort manager.
“Resort?”
“...There’s a resort in the Baekilmong dark sector—run by a ghost-story entity friendly to humans.”
Not technically a lie.
“It’s a rather nice place.”
Yup.
The Mascot patted the back of my head with a soft paw, as if in approval.
The plush touch sent a strange feeling through me.
......
And suddenly, a thought struck me.
What are the odds I’m the fake?
That the Golden Mascot was the real, contaminated me—
and I, here, was just the ghost story’s construct?
...No.
I’m human right now.
A human mind.
My thoughts aren’t broken.
And Brown is still with me.
So the ghostly offshoot must be that one.
No—don’t start calculating “odds.”
Don’t doubt.
Doubt leads to collapse, to wrong decisions.
Even so, with that uncanny unease twisting through me, I kept walking.
“......”
“......”
And, astonishingly...
The thread’s end led to...
Here it was.
The corridor carved with strange rules.
The red yarn lay in a tangled heap across the floor, forming the same distorted, collapsing sentences as before...
“......”
It’s gone.
There was no exit.
In its place, the corridor had appeared again—
the one where the letters melted together,
where the warped space behind the shelves hid something.
For a moment my mind went white.
Then—tak—a sharp sound, and I saw a student’s silhouette step back.
“...!”
It was I-gyeol, the classmate who’d followed us.
I hurried over.
What’s wrong?
He scribbled his reply in a rush—
Don’t go.
That’s somewhere else.
“...!”
It’s not the regular library!
How do you know?
I just do.
You can’t not know.
Amid his confusion, I-gyeol wrote with absolute conviction.
...Wait.
Segwang Industrial High was inside the Hanbit Library.
It occupied one of its special “corners,” so it counted as part of the library.
Maybe even the students were considered library entities.
If that was true—
I-gyeol, do you... know the Hanbit Library’s full user rules?
I do.
Can you write them down?
I-gyeol wrote the “rules” he remembered.
Do not make footsteps.
Do not fall asleep.
Keep your curiosity.
Leave once you’ve gained one thing.
Do not go underground.
Look into the window.
They match.
The order differed, but otherwise it was the same set we’d seen before.
Except—
The one written in red:
<To Those Who Walk the Path of Worship>
—wasn’t there.
So that wasn’t a rule after all.
It felt... different.
Not a regulation, but a lure—
something deeper, urging, reverent.
A law of devotion.
The Law of Worship.
The library’s master—
whatever being had made its home here as a sanctuary—
and the manner in which it demanded obeisance.
...It’s calling us.
Blocking the exit, guiding us onward.
Then...
Could the Wolf Leader and the Golden Mascot appearing now also be part of what it wants?
Click.
“...!”
In that instant, the Guard Captain was already holding the book and pulling the shelf open.
He had deciphered the red anagram on his own—
with eerie precision, just like the Wolf Leader had done before.
“......”
And there it was again: the passage leading into whatever inhabited this library.
“......”
“Should I... go check? Maybe there’s a trace of the others...”
“Please wait.”
I stepped forward instinctively.
“It was extremely dangerous. Inside, the writing system itself starts to collapse.”
“Hmm...”
Then
I’ll go in.
“...!”
I turned.
The Golden Mascot was thumping its chest with one paw.
It’s fine for me.
I’m the library’s host.
“You think the owner’s at the end of that passage?”
Yeah.
“......”
I looked to the Wolf Leader.
He was scanning all of us—calculating, assessing each move.
Wait.
“...Team Leader, could you... keep watch out here?”
“Me?”
“Yes. Someone should guard the entrance. And if someone as sharp to danger as you stayed here, it’d prove we’re not trying to lure you in for a trap.”
“......”
“...Wouldn’t it?”
I couldn’t bring myself to answer.
“It’s fine. Let’s all go together.”
“......!”
He glanced toward the Mascot.
“I prefer keeping potential hazards close. If they’re not going to vanish anyway.”
“......”
That made more sense than any reassurance about trust or camaraderie.
Still—
“No, sir. It might really be dangerous. Please, just in case.”
I took the remaining skein of red yarn and tied it around my waist and the Guard Captain’s.
It didn’t feel very reliable, but it was all we had.
Only as far as we can still see each other.
Then I handed the loose end to the Wolf Leader.
“If we tug from inside, could you pull us back out?”
“......”
His gaze measured the tension in my jaw.
“Fine. I’ll do that.”
Phew.
What about me?
“You stay out here too. You might need to help pull us back—two people’s strength.”
And finally, I turned to I-gyeol.
A farewell.
If I don’t come back,
don’t worry.
There’s another way I can return.
Yeah.
We could always die our way out.
The two going in now—
the Guard Captain and I—
we were the real ones.
That’s what I forced myself to believe.
We existed here, now.
So like before, in the Se-gwang Special City mission,
if we died we’d wake from the dream and escape.
But the others...
Not certain.
If they were truly from the past—
then shouldn’t I remember the Golden Mascot visiting the library?
It had to be fake.
It had to be.
But killing it outright was unthinkable.
Everything was too distorted; who knew what that would trigger?
“......”
“......Shall we?”
“Yeah...”
In that confusion, the Guard Captain and I stepped into the red, shadowed corridor between the shelves.
“......”
Narrower and narrower.
Sloping downward.
A strange descent.
A passage built from books themselves, swallowed by darkness, the text on them unreadable.
No anomalies yet.
We moved carefully, checking ahead, step by step—
thud, thud.
“Hey.”
“......”
“Behind you...”
...Ah.
The Guard Captain, a few paces ahead, had turned to look back at me.
I followed his gaze—and turned my head...
The yarn we’d tied up—
—it was pressed flat against the floor,
forming letters.
Just like the corridor outside.
But this one was worse.
Warped, distorted— freёwebnovel.com
the writing itself was breaking apart.
Language unraveling under the weight of some immense knowledge,
letters collapsing into nonsense,
and yet those unreadable things were glowing faintly in the darkness of the corridor,
pulling us toward them—
Light.
“...!”
That was when I noticed it.
Something half-buried among the tangled threads.
“Mr. Jay,”
A button.
It was wedged between strands of red yarn, pressed halfway into the floor—
and that button—
That’s the same type Deputy Eun Haje always makes for gear and utility items.
My heart pounded.
The Guard Captain followed my gaze; his eyes narrowed.
“...Unwind the thread.”
“......”
“We’ll run, grab it, and go straight back to the entrance. Try not to damage the letters as we move.”
The moment I nodded—
“Then...”
He caught me by the arm, and we sprinted.
No—
he practically leapt across the corridor.
“...!”
Just barely, in perfect timing, I bent down and scooped the button from the floor—
without disturbing a single mark of the thread-written text.
We burst back to the entrance.
Goddamn.
My heart nearly fell out of my chest.
“You okay...?”
“Just a second.”
I stepped out from the hidden shelf, trying to steady my breath,
and examined the button in my hand.
Pressed it—
[Ah.]
“...!”
The recording activated.
[Hoo...]
Deputy Eun Haje’s voice.
Breathy, as if she were forcing herself to whisper.
[This library... wants a librarian.]
[That’s why it tells you to look at the window,]
And then the button fell silent.
A deafening boom followed.
“......”
What just happened?
The chill of worry crept up my spine—
and then realization struck.
A librarian.
A window.
“Hold on.”
I recalled the distorted letters from before.
Unreadable then, but I’d seen the pattern; now I could parse it.
It had said—
을자본신자
속계어라걸
여오기라로
사여서의나
When you rearranged the characters—
자신을 본 자
계속 걸어라
여기로 오라
나의....
Those who see themselves,
Keep walking,
Come here,
My...
“Librarian.”
I lifted my head.
“So that’s it. That’s why the rules told us to look into the window.”
The dark panes reflected our faces like a mirror.
Anyone who looked and saw their own reflection inside this library—
“—could become the librarian.”
Step.
“Considerate, in its own way.”
“The master of this place finds a moment inside each visitor that makes them suitable—”
“—like flipping through a book and stopping on the page that catches its eye.”
Step.
Footsteps of the Wolf Leader.
And—
The Golden Mascot, head bowed low before me.
So rry.
Didn’t know.
Know what?
We’re
the same.
Wait.
That meant—
“If that mascot is who I used to be—”
Then—
Thunk.
The Wolf Leader’s steps stopped.
Right in front of the Guard Captain.
“You’re my future, then.”
“......”
The Guard Captain lifted his dry eyes—
and those irises flashed bright, feral yellow.
“No.”
“You’re...”
“My past.”
And he stared straight into him—
Into the reflection of his own nostalgia.
