By Zephyria 
After laughing for a good while, Jeil Heon ruffled his hair and spoke with a bright expression.
“You’re right. I have four younger siblings; surely at least one of them will be glad to see me? If even one is, it’ll be a huge success.”
“Even if there isn’t, I’ll definitely throw you a welcome party…!”
“Right. With someone already offering to throw me a welcome party, I don’t know what I was so afraid of.”
With a gentle smile, he leaned down and lightly pressed his forehead against Yoo Jiha’s.
“Thank you.”
“…!”
Before he could even process the sudden closeness, Jeil Heon’s face filled his entire field of vision. His heart dropped and then leaped back up. W-what? What is this all of a sudden? Is it because I’m surprised? It felt similar to the water deer collision accident, yet the pounding of his heart was different in a way that left him utterly bewildered.
Before the confused Yoo Jiha could calmly analyze his sudden physical reaction, the team members returned. Fortunately, there were no new victims.
“The Viewing Method for the new performance is simple, which is great, but playing the music is the problem. I think it might work if a vocalist sings it live, but…”
“If only Wi-Fi worked inside an Aberrant Realm, we’d be coasting. Tsk.”
Kim Min-seop, who was walking while carrying a victim who had not yet regained consciousness, clicked his tongue. As they discussed the Viewing Method, the exit soon appeared at the end of the hallway. It was just as the group’s pace quickened slightly.
The air that had been leisurely swirling around Jeil Heon suddenly tightened. He quickly pulled Yoo Jiha behind him for protection and stared into the void.
“What is happening?”
Sensing the sudden shift in atmosphere, the Enforcement Division agents immediately drew their Large Abnormal Rifles from their carriers and scanned the surroundings. Song Hilda and Kim Min-seop also shut their mouths instantly.
“…A demon.”
“What?”
“An External Abnormal Demon is attempting to enter.”
To possess the power to tear through the boundary of an Aberrant Realm and enter meant they were more powerful than the Aberrations bound to the realm who cannot cross the boundary. It was, at the very least, an Aberration of Disaster Grade or higher. An ominous tension instantly spread to everyone.
Soon, there was a crackling sound in the air as if something invisible were colliding, and fragments of an unfamiliar sight—not the Hanseong Opera House Aberrant Realm—intertwined, tore, overlapped, and permeated.
‘…Is that a Talisman?’
Hiding behind Jeil Heon with a nervous heart, Yoo Jiha tried to decipher the meaning of the Talisman faintly visible among the strange fragments. Just then, all the fragments vanished at once. Then, black flames scorched the air, which had returned to its original state, as if burning paper. A short stroke from top to bottom, another short stroke from top to bottom. And beneath them, a gentle, curving line.
“A smile mark?”
Kim Min-seop muttered in bewilderment. As he noted, the shape burned into the air resembled a smiley face. And Yoo Jiha felt a sense of curiosity.
‘Huh. It feels somewhat similar to the Blind Eater’s smiling expression…’
The flames that had lingered for a moment vanished in the blink of an eye, and everything returned to normal as if it had been a lie.
“What was that just now?”
“It seems it gave up on entering.”
The team members looked at each other and murmured. Although he didn’t know the exact details, Yoo Jiha felt relieved that they seemed to have escaped immediate danger.
“Mister—”
He tried to ask Jeil Heon, who was still staring at the void where the black flames had faded, if the danger had passed, but he bit his lip before he could even get the first word out. The face of Jeil Heon reflected in his eyes was frozen in a terrifyingly cold expression.
[Hidden World Record]
Name: Hanseong Opera House
Classification: Aberrant Realm-H-B.Ph-072
First Sighting Date: January 27, 202X
Survival Rate: 23%
Exploration Rate: Estimated 67%
Unexplored Area: Performances not yet identified.
Remarks: Since a new performance was discovered during the latest exploration, the exploration rate is inaccurate. It is ambiguous whether it was a pattern that performed with low probability or a newly added pattern. However, it is an encouraging achievement that Agent Yoo Jiha grasped the essence of the performance and established the correct Viewing Method through his ingenuity during the 19th exploration.
The new performance shall be named the Rival Show.
└Boo, the naming sense is trash. Boo.
Instead of just complaining, please feel free to provide suggestions if you have a better name. However, keep in mind that it must be intuitive enough for victims to understand immediately even amidst confusion. And frankly, regardless of what the name is, I would prefer a constructive discussion on how to transmit music into the Aberrant Realm. I propose research into utilizing the radio waves that transmit the Common Survival Rulebook text.
* * *
The primary duties of the Investigation and Exploration Division are to investigate Aberrant Realms, find exit routes to write Procedure Manuals, review whether there are any changes in the Aberrant Realms, and provide Procedure Manuals for victims within the realms. However, they did not cross into Aberrant Realms every single day. Song Hilda had given a grim explanation that the agents’ mental states would not have held up otherwise.
Lately, he had been studying the Aberrant Realm entries in the Hidden World Record at the office. He was advised that it is best to memorize the currently active Aberrant Realms to the point where he could recite the Procedure Manuals even if he woke up suddenly in the middle of the night. Yoo Jiha studied harder than he ever had during exam periods.
However, he found it difficult to concentrate. It wasn’t because the studies were hard. In the Opera House, he could forget about it for a while by focusing on the immediate mission, but in reality, he spent all day facing the culprit of his first kiss—no, the water deer collision accident—in the office.
Today as well, Yoo Jiha’s gaze flickered toward the head seat of the office. The expression on Jeil Heon’s face as he worked was utterly ordinary. I guess adults really are adults. It felt bitter to realize that while the other person seemed completely unfazed, he was the only one anxious, still unable to shake off his childishness.
‘Ugh, I’ll just study too. The water deer collision accident never happened!’
He tried to immerse himself in his studies, but a corner of his consciousness kept circling back to that day. Wasn’t that contact on a completely different level from the kiss Jeil Heon had given him as a joke? When they were kissing, he had been so swept away that he had no mind of his own, but as time passed, he began to recall it in vivid detail.
‘How could a tongue move in… in… that way?!’
It wasn’t as if he had never seen a kiss scene in a movie or drama; he had even yawned and skipped through scenes that dragged on too wetly. But the kiss he experienced firsthand was not so tedious. The tongue moved in directions he could never have imagined. Rather than responding, his own tongue had been frozen in a daze, only to be entwined and pulled, stimulated by rubbing against the inside of his mouth, and even poking deep into his throat…
“Jiha-ssi.”
“S-sorry! I was just thinking about something else for a moment.”
“How much did you hear?”
“That the origin of anomalies is human Thought…”
Human Thought feeling fear in a cemetery gathers to create a cemetery Aberrant Realm, and human Thought felt while using a broom for a long time gathers to create a goblin Aberration. That is how contamination spreads.
Since humans also possessed the potential to become anomalies, there were cases where the souls of the dead or the bodies of the living became contaminated and transformed into anomalies. Among them, high-ranking anomalies existed for hundreds of years and were even recorded in history books.
“You know Jack the Ripper, right? Even though he was a pathetic killer who only killed powerless women, he became famous because his methods were cruel. To put it dryly, he created a sort of Signature, so he became that strongly recognized by people.”
“Could it be that the reason Jack the Ripper disappeared without being caught was because he became an anomaly?”
“That’s right. I believe that after becoming an anomaly, he was captured and quarantined by the Garter Knights, which can be considered the Management Bureau of England. I don’t know if he’s dead or still in quarantine.”
As she explained, Song Hilda kept her eyes on the monitor, searching through the Hidden World Record.
“You probably wouldn’t know since you weren’t even born yet, but 22 years ago, there was a crazy serial killer who killed people and drew smiling faces on the corpses using the victims’ blood. The media called him the Grinning Killer.”
“Oh, I think I saw that on YouTube before.”
“Since he only killed criminals, people’s fear was lesser, but from the perspective of anomalies, this was a very clever move. Not just serial killings, but whenever vigilante justice in any form becomes a hot topic, the Grinning Killer is consistently mentioned. There are even followers of the Grinning Killer even now.”
“I heard he suddenly disappeared before the culprit was revealed… The profiling said he was a man in his 20s or 30s, right?”
“Right. There is one Aberration that I am almost 100% certain is that serial killer contaminated into an anomaly. Actually, seeing the Aberration that tried to enter the Opera House reminded me of it. Team leader, would you like to see it too?”
As she spoke, Song Hilda pointed to the monitor.