By Zephyria 
Upon taking your seat in the general admission section, look for a spectator entity holding opera glasses before the opera begins. Then, politely request to exchange the opera glasses for one of your personal belongings.
5-1. If you possess glasses or sunglasses, they will gladly exchange them; otherwise, they will propose an exchange for one of your eyeballs. They will stop the bleeding immediately upon extracting the eye, so you only need to endure the pain. If you scream, the fact that you are human will be discovered.
5-2. If you are one-eyed, they will feel pity for you and hand over the opera glasses free of charge. If you are not confident in your ability to withstand the pain of ocular extraction, we recommend damaging your eye beforehand outside the opera house.
The headquarters has not yet discovered a regularity in how the performed operas change in composition. Currently, the only work for which a Viewing Method has been written is 《La Traviata》. If an opera viewed using the incorrect method ends, you must obtain a new ticket and watch the opera again.
If you succeed in escaping by correctly viewing an opera other than 《La Traviata》, please share this with headquarters. A set information fee will be paid. Insincere spectators who do not pay attention to the performance will also be forcibly ejected and must purchase a ticket again.
6-1. You must watch the performance through opera glasses. If you watch it with the naked eye, you will be dragged onto the stage to become a prop. Props cannot move their limbs. In preparation for this, the medicine from the Hanseong Opera House is specially formulated as a pill; keep it in your mouth and chew and swallow it if you become a stage prop.
6-2. The entities performing on stage are singing Italian in reverse, but it will be heard as translated in your ears. Depending on the progress of the performance, there are times when the audience sings along in a chorus or reacts with things like clapping the backs of their hands. Do your best to follow the audience and blend in. Do not harbor doubts about why there is a sing-along during an opera performance. Sing-alongs are the soul of Koreans.
6-3. Even during the intermission, do not attract the attention of the spectator entities and remain seated quietly. Even if an entity speaks to you, pretend to be immersed in the lingering emotions of the opera. If you possess the persona of an over-invested otaku, they will back away with a look of disgust. Be aware that there may occasionally be entities who become even more excited.
《La Traviata》 is a work that sings of the tragic love between a courtesan woman and an aristocratic man. The reason their love could not be realized is the gap in social status. That is right. The only thing you will lose are your chains. Use the proletarian bamboo spear to stab the bellies of the filthy bourgeoisie and aristocrats to death.
Incite the spectator entities at the appropriate timing before the protagonists on stage meet their tragedy. The recommended timing for incitement is Act 2, Scene 1, around the time the male lead’s father forces the female lead to break up with his son. If you are in a box seat, lock the entrance door before inciting. The staff entities who have been serving you until now will attempt to storm in with bamboo spears.
If your incitement is successful, the female lead entity will impale the male lead entity with a bamboo spear and kill him. The spectator entities will also cheer and sing along at the top of their lungs (this is not a metaphor), and some entities may become so overly excited that their entire bodies burst and are crushed to pieces. Do not be shaken by the scattering fragments of Aberration flesh and bodily fluids; sing of the proletarian revolution.
There is a case where a certain Agent of headquarters shouted the preface and key phrases of the Communist Manifesto in German, received a standing ovation, and was returned the body parts they had paid with upon exiting. Please refer to this.
“…….”
What on earth did I just read? I felt like my mind was becoming contaminated even before entering the Aberrant Realm.
* * *
Should I have realized something was wrong when the opera house was named Hanseong? Yoo Jiha rubbed his eyes and looked again, but the scene unfolding in the Aberrant Realm remained unchanged. Aberrations—some wearing traditional hats or veils and looking like horses, others riding things that looked like palanquins—were entering the opera house, which featured a tiled roof.
Seeing his confused face, Kim Min-seop chuckled.
“Quite a strange hybrid, right? The opera house is a culture imported from abroad, but it’s because it’s been clumsily localized. Usually, when Aberrations mimic humans, there’s always a screw loose somewhere.”
“……Shouldn’t they be performing Pansori instead of an opera?”
“There were Aberrant Realms that performed Pansori too.”
Yoo Jiha tugged firmly on the sleeve of Jeil Heon’s field jacket. Then, as Heon leaned in with a “Hmm?”, Jiha quickly whispered in his ear.
“Not only is it dangerous, but it’s a strange Aberrant Realm. Why did you come here first?”
“I chose it because it’s an easy realm. It’s the first day, after all.”
“The survival rate was incredibly low, though?”
“It’s easy to get into the box seats, which are relatively safe areas in a theater, and if the Viewing Method is wrong, you can get another chance without a penalty.”
Didn’t they have to give something of value every time they issued a ticket? Yoo Jiha tilted his head. He didn’t understand why it was considered easy when one might have to give up a body part.
He found out the reason as soon as the tickets were issued. Jeil Heon stopped Song Hilda and Kim Min-seop from taking out the Contaminated Entities they had prepared and bit his thumb to draw blood. As a single drop of red blood fell onto the desk, the staff entity gasped.
「A-A-Are you trying to purchase our opera house-ouuu¡」
“I’ll pass on the building. Just give box seat tickets to everyone in my party. How many times can we watch the performance?”
「There is no n-n-need to issue new tickets, so please enjoy the viewing to your heart’s content¡」
Box seat tickets with unlimited viewing were issued in twenty seconds. Not stopping there, the staff entities swarmed out of the theater as if performing a formal protocol and lined up along the stairs. Yoo Jiha decided not to question why they were wearing dark green eunuch robes.
“Oh…. The lab is going to go crazy for Team leader’s blood.”
“I was already caught and had blood drawn this morning.”
Saying something that could be either a joke or the truth, Jeil Heon gave a light gesture to the group.
“Since this is the first attempt, I want to collect the handling methods for the box seats for both.”
“I’ll do the ‘power trip’ role. There was something I wanted to test to see if there were methods other than power-tripping, but if that doesn’t work, I’ll switch to power-tripping.”
“Sounds good.”
“Then how should we divide the teams….”
Song Hilda stopped mid-sentence, looked at Yoo Jiha, and smirked.
“Our rookie doesn’t seem to be able to leave the Team leader’s side, so Min-seop and I will be the power-trip team. The ‘couple team’ can’t have more than three people, so the Enforcement Division Agent should join the power-trip team as well.”
Yoo Jiha, who had been wondering why she was smiling at him, only then realized he was still clinging tightly to Jeil Heon’s sleeve and hurriedly let go.
He wasn’t the only one flustered by the mention of a ‘couple team.’ Jeil Heon’s eyes widened as he looked at Song Hilda and Kim Min-seop in turn, and finally, looking at Yoo Jiha, his expression became extremely troubled.
“W-Why are you making that face?”
“No…. Um, isn’t the setting of us dating a bit too young for you?”
There was a similar warning in the Procedure Manual, so Jiha had wondered ‘Is that so?’, but Kim Min-seop cut in.
“Eh, as long as they don’t look like a minor because they’re too baby-faced, it’s fine. Jiha-ssi looks exactly his age.”
“That may be true, but….”
“If you’re really anxious, should I join the couple team?”
Before Kim Min-seop could even finish his sentence, an imaginary image of the two of them acting as a sweet couple bloomed vividly in Yoo Jiha’s mind. In that moment, words flew out reflexively.
“I’ll do my best to act old!”
And so, he was assigned to the couple team with a still-unconvinced Jeil Heon.
Since he was being guided through the Aberrant Realm by an Aberration, it would be normal to be scared, but instead, the fact that he had to pretend to be Jeil Heon’s lover weighed more on his mind. Did Heon’s reaction earlier mean that he found it hard to trust a rookie with little experience and a young age to handle the role of a lover skillfully? Come to think of it, his skinship until now had also felt like the way one treats a child….
As he glanced up, Jeil Heon, perhaps interpreting the tension on his face in a different way, lightly wrapped an arm around his shoulder and whispered.