[2019, May 13th | Monday, 06:07 AM]
[Lee Joon: Number of Attempts – 2]
[Ghost Story Points: 173]
[Causality Rate: 30%]
“Son……?”
Early morning.
As I was putting on my shoes in front of the door, my mother, who woke up to the sound, came out of the master bedroom.
“Mom. Good morning.”
“Where are you going so early in the morning…? It’s still a while before school starts…”
“I forgot I had a homework assignment.”
Saying that, I finished tying my shoes, I was already fully dressed in my school uniform with my school bag on.
“I’m planning to go early and get some of it done, so I’ll head out first.”
“You should’ve done some of it over the weekend, going so early in the morning… What about breakfast?”
“I’ll grab something from the convenience store on the way. I’m off.”
Leaving behind my mother’s words, I hurried out of the house.
There were more than just one or two things I needed to take care of early.
* * *
Outside, it was still the bluish dawn.
Breathing in the cold air, I left the apartment complex and walked briskly toward school.
Normally, the road to school would be filled with students in our school uniforms, but right now, I’m the only one walking along the street.
After walking for a while, I saw a few elderly grandmothers and grandfathers, who were early risers, strolling around here and there.
♬ ♪ ♩ ♬
☏Detective Park Gangwoon
Suddenly, my phone rang, and when I took it out, I saw that Detective Park Gangwoon was calling.
Last night, as soon as I realized I had returned, I sent a text to the Detective asking him to contact me as soon as he woke up.
Dud–
“Hello? Detective?”
[Yes, Joon.]
Maybe he had just woken up, his voice was a bit groggy.
[I saw your text. What’s going on?]
“Detective, there’s going to be a bombing attack in ShinLim Neighborhood today.”
[What……!]
“As a result of that attack, one of Clover’s trucks will overturn on the road, and the chemical gas it’s carrying will cause several abnormalities in the sky, leading to the emergence of ghost stories. We have to stop it beforehand.”
[…….]
The Detective remained silent for a moment before asking one thing.
[…Was this incident also something that happened in your previous life?]
“Previous life?”
It was only after hearing those words that I realized.
The chemical gas leak accident caused by this bombing attack.
It was definitely something that never happened in my previous life.
“…No. It didn’t.”
[Really? Hmm……]
The Detective seemed to be thinking for a moment.
[What do you think the reason is?]
“Maybe… back then, ShinLim Neighborhood was completely blocked off, so I think that might be the reason.”
The road in front of Seoul National University Station, where a bomb would explode in a few hours.
In my previous life, this road had definitely been closed off after the ‘Nakseong High School 300 heads explosion incident’.
At that time, the entire ShinLim Neighborhood area was under lockdown due to suspicions of an epidemic, with all access being prohibited.
[That’s where the difference began.]
Hmm, the Detective let out a sound of frustration.
I told the Detective the exact location of the road where the bomb would explode.
[The four-lane road over there. Alright, I understand. For now, I’ll head to the location you mentioned and have the police search the area. But I’m worried. Suddenly, such a big incident occurred, especially when it never happened in your previous life.]
“…I agree. I think we should look into it.”
Up until now, everything that happened in this life had unfolded exactly as it did in my previous life.
Not only society, but even the things I personally experienced happened exactly the same way when time was reversed.
‘That is the law of causality.’
What is meant to happen will happen, the rule by which the world flows.
But this time, the situation was different.
Of course, there were small differences in how the Demon King and I acted compared to my previous life, but if you take away the existence of ghost stories, society flowed in the same way within the larger framework.
A terrorist attack that caused the road to collapse.
That never happened in my previous life.
‘And it isn’t even the Demon King’s doing.’
He merely created ghost stories from existing elements and events that had already happened.
He doesn’t have the ability to manipulate ordinary people into committing a bomb attack.
‘… It didn’t happen in my previous life, but it happened in this life, ignoring the law of causality?’
Because ShinLim Neighborhood was locked down and the roads were closed?
‘…That doesn’t quite add up.’
A bombing attack is something that could happen anywhere across the country.
‘If ShinLim Neighborhood was closed off, they could’ve just gone to the neighboring area, Bongcheon Street, and carried it out there instead.’
But nothing like this ever happened in my previous life.
So it raises a question.
Maybe we’ve misunderstood the very concept of causality.
‘…But what if that’s not the case?’
I turned the thought around in my mind.
‘What if we were never wrong?’
What if our understanding has always been correct?
And yet, this sudden bombing attack happened in ShinLim Neighborhood.
What if this wasn’t an event that ignored the law of causality, but rather one that occurred because it was entirely in line with causality?
‘… Maybe.’
If that’s the case, then despite the different form, a terrorist attack of this scale might have been something that frequently happened to the Clover Corporation even in my previous life.
In fact, I think one of the officials said something along those lines in the news interview Gyeongwon showed me back then.
[“Over the past few years, our company has been subjected to consistent cyber and physical acts of terrorism by an anonymous organization.”]
[“The current incident also seems to be a type of such terrorist acts.”]
Coincidentally, the reason we were even able to play MineCraft back then and had all that incident was thanks to an anonymous hacker who had distributed an illegal version of the game online.
‘It makes sense if I think about it this way.’
This bombing attack wasn’t, as the Detective thought, a new and random incident that disregarded causality.
On the contrary, it’s just one of the many terror attacks that frequently targeted the Clover Corporation in my previous life, only in a different form.
However, in my previous life, ShinLim Neighborhood was closed off due to a horrific incident, so that influenced the terrorists’ actions, leading them to choose a different method and approach.
Perhaps, even in my previous life, such terrorism had been quietly happening to Clover.
‘…For now, let’s leave this matter to the Detective.’
Right now, whether that company’s people and the terrorists are fighting each other or whatever, it’s none of our business.
What we need to focus on right now is the enemy in front of us.
The ghost stories we frequently encounter, the Dogma of Void and their people in school, and the buried Demon King.
‘… School.’
Lost in thought as I walked, I soon arrived at my destination.
The school, bathed in the bluish dawn light, stood with its lights off.
The playground could be seen beyond the main gate.
It was still early in the morning, not yet 7 a.m., but surprisingly, the main gate was open.
Looking around, I noticed a few residents strolling around the playground, taking a walk.
‘…What’s going on? With our security guard’s personality, there’s no way he’d allow something like that.’
The security guard I knew was someone who only had a sense of duty left in his life, and that is guarding the school gate. He was strict about monitoring access, even for the students, let alone outside residents.
Seeing the main gate wide open from dawn, with residents casually walking around, was an unimaginable sight for me.
I quickly glanced at the security booth and immediately understood the reason.
Inside the booth, there was a friendly-looking man I had never seen before, dozing off.
Like many other schools, ours also had two security guards working in shifts, day and night. The man on duty now was the night-shift guard, still on the clock before his shift ended.
‘The guardian of darkness and the guardian of light.’
In this case, it seems the night-shift guard, the guardian of the dark, is the one with the gentler personality.
The guardian of light is a lunatic.
Vrooooom—
Suddenly, I heard the sound of a car behind me and stepped aside.
Maybe it was one of the teachers arriving early for work.
But instead of entering through the main gate, the car stopped right next to me.
Wondering what it was, I turned my head, and realized it wasn’t an ordinary car.
‘… A limousine?’
A long car with a sleek, luxurious black sheen.
A car that didn’t suit the quiet, middle-class academic high school at all, the kind that only wealthy or important people would drive, came to a stop in front of the gate in the early morning.
Soon, a man wearing a suit and sunglasses got out of the driver’s seat, walked around the car, and opened the backseat door.
Click–
I could hear someone getting out from the open back door of the limousine, but since it was on the opposite side from where I was standing, they were obscured by the car.
The man in the suit circled back around, returned to the driver’s seat, got into the car, and started the limousine.
And until then, the person standing on the other side of the car was still unmoved.
Since the person got out of the backseat and was standing across from me, with a car between us, I could only see the top of their head.
A moment of strange silence flowed in the early morning.
Soon, the car drove off, and only then did the figure I had been facing become fully visible.
“Joon.”
“……”
A neat and slim school uniform, straight black hair.
A female student with long eyelashes, exuding a mysterious aura that blended with the dawn.
“…Hayoon.”
“Hello.”
She gently smiled and looked at me.
Still standing quietly in the same spot, just a few steps away.
“I had a strange dream.”
“Really……?”
“Yeah.”
With those words, she quietly lifted the corners of her mouth into a smile.
Soon, someone came running from the path leading to the public apartment complex right next to the school.
“Huff, huff… Huh……?”
“…Sunah.”
“Joon……?”
It was Sunah, panting as she ran toward us.
She quickly stopped in front of us, wiping her sweat with a sigh.
“I, I had a strange dream… so I came to school early……”
“……”
Right after, someone trudged over from the large main road that led all the way to ShinLim Station, and at the same time, a taxi rushed toward us and stopped with a screech.
The person trudging over was Jinhee, coming back from her night shift, and the one who hurriedly got out of the taxi, sweating cold, was Gyeongwon.
“P, Prez? Why are you all here……”
“Hmm~ What are you guys doing here?”
Gyeongwon flustered, looked around at us, while Jinhee casually joined the group.
“Whose birthday is it?”
“Me, I… I mean…”
Gyeongwon, adjusting his glasses with a flustered expression, looked at us.
“I… I had a strange dream, so I came early……”
“Huh? What kind of dream?”
Jinhee looked at Gyeongwon, seemingly startled.
Gyeongwon just shook his head, as if he was having a hard time explaining.
“That… There was like… like… Buddhas flying in the sky… it was strange…”
“Oh. I had a similar dream while dozing off in the break room.”
“Me, me too… I had it too……”
The club members nodded as they looked at each other.
Soon, Jinhee frowned and glanced behind her.
“But where’s that Otaku? Why isn’t he here?”
“…Yeah, that’s true.”
The club members were puzzled, but my guess was that Dukhun, with his personality, probably thought it was just a bizarre dream and went back to sleep.
‘Wow~ I had a strange dream~’
[Your understanding of the character Oh Dukhun has increased by 5.]
“Guys. You know.”
In the bluish dawn, I quietly explained to the club members in a whisper, standing in front of the school gate.
“It wasn’t a dream… these were actually things that happened, but I think I turned them into a dream.”
“Wow, crazy……”
The club members looked at me in shock.
I added one last thing.
“We have to stop it. From now on.”
Gyeongwon immediately pulled out his phone to check the time.
It was to see how many hours were left before everything happened.
“The bomb terror on the road and the resulting accidents will be handled by the Detective. He said he’d deploy the police and start the search immediately.”
“Then we……”
“We, in the meantime, need to find the human anatomy model inside the school and destroy it.”
The club members nodded with a serious look.
Except for Hayoon, who was smiling, everyone else had slightly tense expressions on their faces.
‘Once again.’
Once again, the detective will handle the incident outside, and we’ll solve the case inside.
yeahhhhh!!!!