A familiar name.

Something I had known.

It surged up from deep within me again like a rising tide, but—

I did not react.

“Employee?”

Because I knew it would be unwise to express this feeling.

……

Why is that?

Suddenly, a strange sensation began to stir ✧ NоvеIight ✧ (Original source) inside my head.

It felt like trying to forcibly pull up an anchor that had sunk into the deep sea.

With my previous senses eroded, my crushed brain and consciousness strained to resume thinking like they once did.

Jang Heowoon…

He was dead.

His body had lain collapsed on the resort room floor.

But... that is to say... he had been reconstructed, contaminated, and brought back out as a resort employee.

And I had...

I gave him the wish ticket.

If the wish ticket I passed on to Jang Heowoon had really been delivered successfully, and he had come back to life as a result—

If what I saw was him living again, as a human being—

……

My broken mind reached a conclusion.

That this was relief—something I only realized very, very slowly.

A direct emotion, felt for the first time in far too long, landed like a dull ache.

“How did hearing their names make you feel? Lee Jeongin, Park Yonghae…… Jang Heowoon.”

And I understood that telling this to the notorious researcher in front of me would never be a wise choice.

The threads of that judgment barely tied themselves together in my head.

“What do you think?”

I stared at him in silence.

Kwak Jaegang, eyes full of anticipation, finally clicked his tongue when silence continued to stretch.

“Another ‘no response,’ is it? As expected, memories from sacrificial mediums used as conduits don’t mean much… Haha, my apologies. But, you know, as a man of science I just have to ask these things. Hahaha!”

Kwak Jaegang chuckled to himself awkwardly, then muttered as if to no one.

“Still, I did get quite a show today, employee. You haven’t reacted to anything like a proper machine for the past half year…”

……

Half a year?

“They say doing a fun little event like this every six months helps prevent burnout. Don’t you agree?”

That’s when I realized.

It had only been half a year since I was thrown down here to Basement 13.

Or rather… it had already been half a year.

“Wow~ must’ve been fun. You even helped those three-person newbie teams—so obviously fresh-faced—explore the sublevels of the annex!”

Kwak Jaegang pressed on, subtle and persistent.

“Did you feel any déjà vu? Maybe a glimmer of familiarity, like you’d seen that kind of work or environment before…?”

Silence.

“Did you feel any sympathy for them?”

Silence.

“Man, you’re really not a talker, huh. But then... why’d you help them?”

……

“Your designated work zone is clearly listed as Basement 13. I understand you technically didn’t step out of the elevator, but still…”

His eyes glistened with a manic gleam.

“What possible reason could you have to go that far to help them!”

……

“Did you maybe feel like it? Driven by a sense of duty to help others?”

……

“Haha, silence is still a meaningful response, I suppose. Confusion, maybe? I wonder if similar results would show with just slightly adjusted variables…”

I raised my hand and pointed at Room 666.

More precisely—at the old television mounted in the ceiling corner.

The one where the employee training video used to play.

“…Oh.”

And with smoke, I formed a single sentence.

Employee Regulation 17: Cooperate with your fellow employees.

The sentence from the training video.

Even the font was perfectly replicated, and Kwak Jaegang recognized it instantly.

“Aha, of course!”

The frantic tapping of a stylus on his tablet echoed in the room.

“So it was because of the training video. Very... haha, well—shall we say gentle? Or perhaps benevolent? Or maybe it just means that discipline and order are key values! I see. A special department employee, indeed... haha, I understand completely.”

Then his pen stopped, and his voice dropped to something more insinuating.

“But you wasted your effort, you know. Those participants you helped…”

He raised both hands in a mock surprise gesture.

“They weren’t fellow employees. Haha!”

……

I know.

“They weren’t new hires. They were just test subjects!”

It hadn’t been an actual orientation for a field expedition team to begin with.

It was an experimental project inspired by that structure, borrowing its name.

Experiment Title: New Employee Orientation

They were never real new employees.

Strictly speaking, they were applicants who had applied for a position but were rejected for various reasons.

Then a fake email was sent to trick them into thinking they had been accepted into their intended department.

The reason was...

“Think of them like part-time hires gathered for specimen collection!”

To supplement civilian exploration records.

An effort designed to collect meaningful new data from the Darkness by using untrained civilians, whose cases had been lacking in past reports.

Rejected applicants with suitable aptitudes were selected and placed into a simulation that mimicked the real new employee orientation process.

The company couldn’t just carelessly deploy its Darkness reserves into the civilian world.

That’s why most of its exploration records came from the Darkness Exploration Team—skilled professionals.

Even new hires, who were the closest thing to civilians, only entered controlled orientations using Darkness specimens curated to test specific skill sets.

Then one researcher had a brilliant idea:

Let’s recycle the applicants!

There was no need to gather participants in secret or dodge legal oversight. The timing was perfect for easy recruitment.

And of course, it wasn’t entirely a scam.

There was a reward that could justify the deception.

Rejected applicants who successfully completed the mission would be given a special contract offer to join the Darkness Exploration Team.

Thus, the company’s official justification was this:

“To offer a second chance at employment through supplemental acceptance.”

In other words…

“Well, you might run into them again later—as actual colleagues!”

Anyone who completed their mission and survived would be granted an employment opportunity, which, in a way, made it no different from a real orientation.

And I know.

Jang Heowoon passed.

…….

 

Could it really be Jang Heowoon?

“Hm. Would you like to meet him again?”

I tried to recall the faces of the three new hires I had seen earlier.

I couldn’t remember. They were a melting mosaic.

“Do you perhaps have a preference for coworker age or gender?”

I couldn’t remember their voices either. They’d sounded like low-quality radio static.

“Do you have a preferred corpse?”

I turned to look at Kwak Jaegang.

“No preference? Not even one? Truly?”

……

I raised my hand.

The smoke began to shift, and Kwak Jaegang’s expression lit up.

“Yes! That’s it, communicate with language—”

WARNING 1
Reason: Work request outside of contracted hours
Accumulated warnings: 1 / 2 until disciplinary action

“…Ah.”

From Room 666, or perhaps from inside my own head, a familiar system broadcast began to play.

The sound signaling the end of my shift.

—Your working hours have ended. Please return immediately. Your working hours have ended. Please return immediately…

“No, I mean this interview is less work and more of a light—”

WARNING 2
Reason: Work request outside of contracted hours

“……”

Accumulated warnings: 2 / 1 more until disciplinary action

Smoke began rising at my feet.

Kwak Jaegang fell silent. I could see the tense shoulder muscles of the Security Team members standing nearby.

I couldn’t see it, but I could feel the safety barrier they’d erected between me and Kwak Jaegang.

However, in Basement 13—my designated security jurisdiction—I knew I had the authority to override that and issue a disciplinary penalty to this researcher.

I knew it.

“…Haha! Right. The mandatory rest period guaranteed by contract must be respected! I agree, wholeheartedly.”

I thought I saw Kwak Jaegang’s smile behind the melting mosaic.

It was the seasoned instinct of a veteran Darkness researcher.

Knowing when to stop.

“Enjoy your rest. …You have plenty of time, after all!”

But his voice didn’t sound particularly disappointed.

Standing at the center of the Security Team, Kwak Jaegang gave a cheerful little wave and gathered his handwritten interview notes with a grin.

“Because I’m your assigned researcher, you know.”

……

“I’ll support you to the best of my ability. For a very, very long time. Let’s get along well. Hahaha… Even at your newly assigned post.”

Some time later.

I awoke not in the sublevels of the annex, not in Basement 13, but somewhere else.

A new worksite.

***

Kwak Jaegang typed feverishly, euphoria rising all the way to the top of his head.

Recording experimental results was pure joy.

Especially when the experiment involved such a massive number of test subjects and yielded anomalous results through multi-faceted interactions!

“Hahaha, I can’t believe this actually happened. How in the world did anyone manage to sign a contract with something like that…”

Eyes glinting, he stared into the PC screen.

Displayed there was a cleanly transcribed version of his handwritten notes: a simplified experiment record.

New Employee Orientation – 21st Attempt

Listed were case studies involving interactions between orientation participants and the security officers of each sublevel of the annex—the so-called “Special Department Employees.”

And without a doubt, the longest entry:

2.2.1 Basement 13 Security Officer (hereafter referred to as 130666)

“To think I’d meet it again like this.”

He’d harbored quiet hopes the moment Director Cheong first assigned him a “special task.”

But for it to really show up!

Kwak Jaegang recalled the entity that had once interrogated him—a strange being of horns, gas lamps, and dense smoke.

That bizarre thing which had borrowed the vessel of the fastest-promoted agent in the Exploration Team.

Of course, the version he saw now seemed more mechanical, more bound than before…

But wasn’t that all the more reason to be curious?

Did some kind of side effect manifest?

Truly fascinating!

As he analyzed the emerging behavioral trends from this experiment, his excitement only grew.

He glanced at the note he’d attached:

This subject, while serving as Basement 13’s security officer for 179 days, has adhered strictly to employee regulations, showing none of the non-cooperative or aggressive anomalies typically observed in Special Department entities.

However, in the current experiment, the subject identified a regulatory loophole, boarded the elevator stopped in their jurisdiction, and accompanied incoming test subjects—proactively aiding their survival.

This is the thing.

Said behavior resembles the pre-death dream-fragment collection tendencies of the employee corpse used during the signing of 130666’s employment contract.
Suspected to be indirect ego influence—further experimentation pending request.

“This is 100% getting censored.”

Anything labeled as a researcher’s personal opinion might get flagged—or the entire section might just be deleted.

It wasn’t all that shocking that a Security Team Special Department contract had required the complete sacrificial offering of an employee’s corpse—but the identity was the problem.

“Would they really want to admit that it used to be the elite employee with the fastest promotion record?”

They’d never want to name specifics.

Especially if some lunatic in the research team managed to deduce it on their own without being told…

Kwak Jaegang shrugged, thinking of that intriguing employee—Kim Soleum—and let his fingers fly even faster over the keys.

Because the next part was even more interesting!

130666’s Anomalous Aggression
: When enveloped by the subject’s smoke (hereafter referred to as 130666-1), humanoid Darkness entities are transformed into corpses.

No signs of life. Blood and cell samples confirm early-stage decomposition consistent with human cadavers.

CCTV footage of the elevator while 130666 was active intermittently shows the entire space engulfed in 130666, resembling paranormal phenomena.

He hummed as he recalled the annex basement security staff who had turned into corpses.

They were being slowly restored by the Darkness, but appeared to be undergoing bizarre, chaotic mutations as if suffering from some residual side effect.

Even Security Team members exhibited unusual reactions just by getting close to the affected area—some form of contamination flare-up, perhaps.

Kwak Jaegang grinned wide.

“Really, such fun little friends.”

…And so.

He couldn’t help but think of something interesting.

No additional risk anomalies observed. 130666 returns to employee form prior to disembarking the elevator.

And therefore—

Therefore, subject is officially approved as fit for full Special Department duty.

“Hahahaha!”

However—

Dedicated supervisory personnel will be assigned to prevent spontaneous incidents or fatal safety accidents.

Kwak Jaegang was thrilled.

This had already been approved at the upper levels.

Which meant… the personnel had been personally selected by him.

Safety Lead: Security Team 3 Captain (J3, legal name: ■■■)
Control Support: Special Oversight Division Agent (Badger, legal name: Park Minseong)

And so—

“…Ah.”

130666, in its newly reassigned worksite, was about to meet two Security Team employees.