By Zephyria 
Having been through this before, he searched the drawers thoroughly. While there weren’t any secret mechanisms like the ones in the desk at the Starlight Road study, he managed to find a single note that had slipped behind a drawer.
[Don’t forget Friday. Double check needed.]
It didn’t seem intentionally hidden; rather, it looked as if a rare handwritten note had simply fluttered down and fallen asleep there. The familiar handwriting grated on his nerves.
“Was it Jin Seong-jo?”
“How do you know that?”
“Jin Mu-hae’s expression gave it away.”
For now, that was all. Unless he tore down every single intact wall, the greatest achievement so far was Teacher Jung’s synthetic tree video.
He could see the ghosts of their younger selves overlapping in the empty space—giggling and doing useless things even in the midst of their busy schedules. It wasn’t the first or second time he’d thought about it, yet it always left him with a strange feeling.
Mu-hae tidied up the opened ceiling tiles and vent covers and dusted off his hands. He intended to search the rest after a break.
Since it was almost mealtime, he needed to put some cereal or snacks in Joo-oh’s mouth to ensure the rest of his day would be peaceful.
“What about the air conditioner?”
“What air conditioner?”
“Did you look for it?”
As he headed toward the bathroom to finish washing his hands, Joo-oh stopped him—which was unusual right before meal prep.
It’s over by that hole. I already checked, Mu-hae replied indifferently, turning on the faucet. Amidst the rushing sound of the water, a calm, melodic voice reached him.
“No, not the air vents. The machine. I heard CEO Gil installed it himself.”
The heating, cooling, air purification, and ventilation of the hideout were all handled by air passages drilled into each location. Once the functions were activated, the environment was created automatically, so Mu-hae had no idea where they connected or how they operated.
If a younger CEO Gil had seen him, he would have told him to get lost and stop getting in the way. Mu-hae frowned slightly, staring blankly at the pouring water.
Considering security, it shouldn’t be connected to the floor above. Was there such a space below here?
“Aren’t you hungry?”
“If Jin Mu-hae pets me.”
Good grief. The fact that he never tired of flirting even at times like this almost made him seem consistent and diligent.
Mu-hae rubbed the soft hair between his fingers a few times, and just as the other tried to lean in and press his face against him, Mu-hae firmly pushed his cheek away.
“Should we look for where the sound is coming from?”
Just a bit of touching, and he had suddenly found a brilliant idea. Mu-hae stood him next to the desk and hurriedly activated the air conditioner.
Aside from a beep of operation, no noise was heard, but the air quickly grew cold. Using the cooling function so lavishly in this still-chilly weather made it feel as if the soul of a miser, which had been quiet for a while, was screaming inside his body.
“Over there.”
Following him, they arrived at a room that seemed to have been used half as a warehouse. A place he had already searched more than three times. Through several sweeps, he had never discovered any special clues or items here.
However, in this damn secret organization, ‘invisible’ and ‘non-existent’ carried entirely different meanings.
Thump! Mu-hae kicked the adjacent wall with the toe of his boot. Gauging the volume and resonance of the sound, he moved to the side and kicked again. Bang!
He continued kicking every wall, even moving furniture out of the way, until he felt a suspicious rattling sensation. While he was scanning the area thoroughly to see if there was some kind of mechanism, Joo-oh, who had been watching the spectacle, rushed over.
And then, crack!
“…….”
“Ta-da.”
He tore the wall open. The broken seams crumbled and fell away, centered around the rattling part.
Joo-oh, who had lifted the entire false wall and set it aside, pointed forward with a proud face. A faint humming sound was coming from directly inside.
A line of machines, displaying temperature and humidity on monitors, were working hard. Stuck to them was a warning note written in an eerily red font, pressed down with emphasis.
WHOEVER DIES
Do not touch under any circumstances. Operate only through the main system. If you touch it directly and break it one more time, I am quitting everything and going on strike.
Isn’t the problem that the temperature only goes down to 21 degrees Celsius when adjusted via the main system? Besides, no one ever asked him to repair it. ‘Going on strike,’ my foot.
“Jin Seong-jo is down here. Right?”
“…….”
There was no time to indulge in sentimentality before the shadow of a past that no longer existed. Still, seeing that the time of those who did not know the future seemed quite joyful made his mouth taste a bit bitter.
Jin Mu-hae brushed his fingertips over the dust-covered equipment and found a connection port next to a device that appeared to be for indoor temperature control.
A data chip was faintly visible inside the connected reader device. Is it okay to just pull this out? After a moment of hesitation, he applied force, and with a click, the device stopped instantly.
“Oh no. He said not to touch it directly.”
“…….”
“Now we can’t use the air conditioner.”
Joo-oh chattered with a mischievous face, as if his previous helpfulness had been a fluke.
It didn’t matter. He was going to escape this kind of mission before the weather got hot. Mu-hae separated the reader and the chip and strode back toward the main area where the desk was.
He inserted the data chip into the system and waited, and new folders appeared on the wall panel.
[Control]
[Backup]
[Temporary Storage]
Since the machine had stopped the moment he pulled it, he naturally assumed it only contained codes for the air conditioner’s operation.
He opened it without much expectation, but the capacity was large. It seemed someone had temporarily connected a chip they normally used and forgotten about it forever.
Or perhaps they had become unable to return. The latter seemed more likely, leaving him speechless.
Mu-hae quietly opened the backup folder and scanned the list. Then, he slowly opened them one by one.
From trivial, lightweight conversation logs to reports saved during research, the two of them scrolled through the various records, their eyes darting back and forth.
* * *
West Wind: How could such information be hidden?
Noru: I never hid it. The timing of the discovery was ambiguous, so I just delayed the report.
Noru: Also, its priority was lower than the problems currently in the resolution stage.
West Wind: Just who decided that ‘priority’?
Noru: All the key personnel. It’s unfortunate you weren’t there when the manual was being created.
……
……
Noru: Calm down. Please.
Noru: If you think about it, this was a fully predictable result.
West Wind: Let’s go outside and talk for a moment.
Noru: Here we go again.
>> MEMORY PURGE : FAILED
>> TRACE RESIDUE DETECTED
>> ARCHIVE GHOST REMAINS
[CODE: GR-11/NULL]
If someone backed up the remnants of conversation logs they had tried to delete, was that because they were thorough or because they were sinister?
Jin Mu-hae was able to find quite a few conversation logs and documents on the data chip he had retrieved.
It seemed they had periodically deleted saved files, as only content from a period of about three months remained.
The records of West Wind, which he hadn’t been able to find in the hideout’s system, were contained intact within.
“The atmosphere is scary. Total breakdown. Ruin. Catastrophe.”
“Are you studying vocabulary? Stop talking nonsense and find something useful.”
As expected, the responses of his father and West Wind diverged violently over a certain piece of information. Mu-hae easily realized that it was a flaw in the Starpath.
From then on, he searched with burning intensity, from control codes that forced the hideout’s temperature to stay above 21 degrees to random memos typed out.
Then, he discovered a video clip about five minutes long.
“Jin Mu-hae. Look at this. It’s totally poorly made.”
“……It’s unfinished.”
Did they believe a day would come when they could introduce the Return flight’s intention to end Crystal Blue to others?
A simple promotional video explaining their goal was crudely spliced together.
The massive night view of Goryeo City Central. A flying object crossing the sky.
An automated city and smiling people. The core of the energy center glowing blue.
The calm music became subtly anxious, and soon, the warning lights of the energy facility began to blink.
Walls burning black, blurry CCTV footage showing the exterior of the city. Frames of aberrant creatures flickered between the cheers of the people.
News reports of attacks, which gradually became more frequent after the first appearance of the Aberrants, flashed across the screen.
Comfort zones expanded across the land. Existing cities and sites vanished, and soon, only sparse spheres remained on Earth.
[Drowned in convenience, we did not ask.]
[Where that light came from.]
[And what was born along with it.]
That was all. There were two more minutes of playback time left, but the video turned black. As if it had been cut out.
Feeling uneasy, he explored the location of the file, and as if waiting, a file with the same name appeared in the temporary storage folder.
It was a record where the patchwork video editing process remained intact. Seeing the program load after a long time because it was so old, Joo-oh blinked his eyes wide.
“Did CEO Gil make this too?”
“Who knows.”
“The narration subtitles are all deleted. I guess he didn’t like them.”
[With a single decision, every entity threatening humanity will be annihilated at its root……]
[On the day the root closes, the curse strangling humanity will also……]
The traces of dense deliberation had all been erased starting from a certain date. Mu-hae, narrowing his brow at the sense of déjà vu, swallowed hard.
All the records here were modified or written within a certain period.
During the time of the argument between Noru and West Wind, the subtitles of the propaganda announcing the end of the Aberrants had been cut out entirely.
257 – I Became an Anomaly in a Dead Game