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The place the Team Leader guided us to was a small room devoid of people.

“Kim Chan Ho, do you remember?”

The Team Leader briefly disappeared and then handed us a file, while Aileen looked at me as she fumbled through it.

“I remember.”

Kim Chan Ho.

An unforgettable name.

There had been three instances where Critical hadn’t worked, and the reasons were all different.

In Yu Da On’s case, now a corpus, there appeared to be no weakness to hit with Critical at all.

In the case of Aestheticism, weaknesses were apparent, and it was possible to shoot at them with Critical, but it felt as if those weaknesses were obscured by something, or that Critical was ‘overlaid’.

Conversely, Kim Chan Ho was distinctly different from the two examples mentioned earlier.

His weakness was clearly visible, and without a doubt, the bullets lodged themselves into his body.

However, afterward, it seemed as if he had ‘resurrected.’

If my memory serves right, it happened when the cross he bore was destroyed.

Dying and coming back to life isn’t shocking.

I too hold a life borrowed from Aestheticism, and the person next to me is someone far from death.

“Is something wrong?”

“No.”

I looked at Yu Da On, who was tilting her head, then shifted my gaze back to Aileen.

“There must be a reason you suddenly requested to review the file. And I’m sure there’s a reason you summoned the three of us.”

“Actually, I also called the head of the Human Resources Team.”

Aileen continued, rubbing her eyes as if she was tired.

“She insisted on refusing.”

“…Was it because she had a bad feeling about it?”

“She didn’t say that.”

Aileen shook her head and opened the file to show me.

“As you can see, this man hasn’t caused any issues at all.”

The face of the man we saw at the amusement park was in the picture.

“He lived quietly, resigned, and disappeared from the minds of those around him along with memory erasure.”

“…”

“However, recently, there have been sightings claiming they’ve seen this man.”

Aileen stared intently at the man’s photo.

“Where was it?”

“First, ‘the church.’”

‘The church.’

I recalled the background that hung over Aileen’s head.

[After losing her entire family at ‘the church.’]

Her gaze was certainly directed at the man in the picture, but her focus seemed to drift far away, as if lost in thought.

“Next.”

She pulled out her smartphone and handed it to me.

The man was entering a nursery.

“…”

“The nursery.”

Gangseo Nursery, which is affiliated with the Management Agency.

“This place is mainly where the children of Management Agency employees, who lost their parents due to anomalies, go.”

“…”

“Probably because this is… the Gangseo anomaly area… If we were to give the biggest example, it would be Gangseo University Hospital.”

“…University Hospital.”

Yu Da On murmured in a lower voice, and a male figure and voice surfaced in my mind.

Half his body missing, the sound of a gunshot from outside the door.

And,

“Your expression doesn’t look good.”

“I do have some things on my mind.”

“…Is that so? Anyway, this man’s recent trail cuts off here.”

“Is the nursery alright?”

“That’s why we came here.”

I heard the sound of paper crumpling.

Aileen, holding the paper tightly, looked at me.

“I heard that communication with the nursery was cut off since morning.”

“…”

“I was told one special team member had been dispatched.”

“Special team?”

“A betrayal handling unit.”

Jang Chae Yeon, who had been listening to the conversation, spoke up.

“When a Management Agency employee is judged to have betrayed, that’s the team responsible for dealing with them.”

“Normally, the response team wouldn’t have the authority to intervene in this incident.”

Aileen looked at me intently.

“But this man, I think he might have the information I need most.”

“Information, you say.”

She must be referring to the church.

“I have a place I absolutely must breakthrough, and somewhere I need to find.”

Aileen continued, clenching her fist tightly.

She was trembling as she spoke.

“I have family to save, and if I can save them, I wouldn’t care if my body was torn apart a hundredfold and I drifted through hell without facing death for eternity.”

“…”

“This is a clue. It’s like a beam of light shining on me after years of wandering in darkness.”

As she desperately explained her situation, a man overlapped in my mind.

‘Please take care of my daughter, Yea Eun.’

At her words, I recalled the voice of a haggard man who had spoken to me with a composed expression.

Aileen looked at me, still with her fist clenched.

“So please—”

“It’s alright.”

I reached out, stopping Aileen’s words.

I didn’t need to hear more. I too had decided what I would do.

“Please tell me what I need to do.”

“…Are you really okay with this?”

“I have a promise I need to keep.”

“…Thank you.”

Aileen brushed her hair aside.

The faded blonde hair glimmered dully as it caught the light, revealing her youthful face.

Her expression was fatigued, but her eyes shone with an unusual fervor.

“Wait.”

Then, cutting off her statements sharply, Song Ah Rin spoke up.

“We haven’t said we’re doing this yet.”

Song Ah Rin stared intently at Aileen, who blinked and looked back at her.

“If you don’t want to come, you don’t have to.”

“…What?”

“I just asked Kim Jae Heon’s opinion. I need to consider others’ opinions too.”

“…What about you guys?”

Hearing her words, Song Ah Rin turned her head to look at the others, and after a moment of hesitation, Yu Da On spoke.

“I… want to go if it’s about something that happened in the hospital.”

“…White hair.”

“What’s there to do staying behind? I’m going.”

“…I could stay behind.”

“You won’t stay behind, right?”

Jang Chae Yeon looked intently at Song Ah Rin, and Song Ah Rin, upon meeting her gaze, slightly bit her lip and turned back to Aileen.

“Everyone from the Human Resources Team is participating.”

“I’ll express my gratitude again.”

At Song Ah Rin’s comment, Aileen saluted formally and continued speaking.

“As I’ve said before, this is a matter that the response team cannot interfere with. It’s not an anomaly, but tracking someone presumed to be a containment object or a traitor.”

“Ah.”

“So I can’t act with the team, and I can’t receive formal permission either.”

“Wait a minute.”

Listening to Aileen, a question arose in my mind.

“If it’s outside your authority, isn’t it the same for the Human Resources Team?”

“Your team’s situation has changed significantly.”

“Huh?”

“Originally, the Human Resources Team should have had no involvement in events like this.”

Aileen raised her finger as she spoke.

“That’s true.”

“But recent events, like the major flood incident, and various other smaller incidents, have made the position of the Human Resources Team very ambiguous.”

“What do you mean by ambiguous…”

“It’s become a team where it wouldn’t be strange to be involved in any incident, yet also wouldn’t be strange not to be involved.”

“…So it’s because we’ve been caught up in a lot of incidents.”

“It’s not wrong.”

Aileen nodded.

“From your perspective, it must be exhausting and frightening, but for me, it’s a perfect scenario to take along a guest member.”

Calling the response team’s leader a guest member, what kind of organization are these people?

“Anyway, I don’t think it’d be a problem for the Human Resources Team to get involved in this incident. At least, I hope so.”

Does a plan thrown together like this really work?

“Can we truly operate in such a haphazard manner?”

“Have you worked in a company for only a day or two?”

Aileen flashed a playful smile at me.

“We can always throw the Branch Chief under the bus if necessary.”

*

Not long after, we stood in front of the nursery.

<Gangseo Nursery>

“It’s really working, huh.”

“There’s no reason it shouldn’t.”

Aileen grinned confidently as she gathered her weapon.

Contrary to our worries, there was no need to sell the Branch Chief out.

Because, essentially, there was no one here at all.

“Is it okay for there to be this few people?”

In response to my murmur, Aileen nonchalantly replied while checking her gear and slinging her rifle over her back.

“They might have already gotten in.”

“That makes sense.”

With a click, Aileen finished her preparations and turned to face us.

“From what I’ve heard, communication with the nursery has been cut off, and we’ve arrived here following the trace of Kim Chan Ho.”

“Our priorities are securing the safety of the nursery staff and capturing or gathering information on Kim Chan Ho.”

“Exactly. If necessary, we can collaborate with special team members.”

“Are the special team members strong?”

The Isolation Team was the strongest, but isn’t it common for the special team to be even stronger?

“No.”

“Huh, really?”

“They’re not about being strong… they excel at something else.”

Aileen mumbled the words while handing a shotgun to Song Ah Rin, who skillfully accepted it.

“In serious cases, the special team may have been killed, so we really must tread cautiously.”

“…”

“Otherwise, a certain level of dimension shift may have progressed, and if that’s the case, we’ll need to navigate through it.”

Aileen continued in a solemn tone, standing before the closed nursery door.

“It’s just like at the amusement park. I’ll assist when instinctive judgment is needed, but generally, we’ll go based on your call.”

“Understood.”

Nodding to her words, Aileen carefully opened the door.

-Creeeak…

Seeming made from aged wood, the door creaked as it opened.

-Sluuuurp…

Behind the door was a narrow, dim corridor, with a chill seeping from the room, where a single person was literally ‘stuck’ in the wall.

There was no blood, nor any gruesome spectacle.

Only a person, as if they were simply supposed to be stuck in the wall.

“Whoa, what in the world is this.”

Ignoring Song Ah Rin’s murmur behind me, the person wedged in the wall suddenly dropped out with a thud.

-Crunch, crunch…

With a horrible sound, his body twisted and then,

“…”

He turned into a lamp and adhered to the wall.

A translucent window appeared above the lamp.

[Name: QKRANSRB]

[Age: X]

[Specialty: X]

[Talent: Absorption]

[Background: This is alive.]

[Weakness: Being alive means it can be killed.]

As we were dumbfounded, as if mocking us, the lamp was sucked back into the wall,

-Splatt!

And burst into a heap of flesh.

“…”

Yu Da On, witnessing the scene, muttered awkwardly.

“It feels as if the house is alive?”

I couldn’t help but agree with her.

“Song Ah Rin.”

“Yeah.”

At my words, Song Ah Rin nodded and closed her eyes to concentrate.

“There are people. They’re not in the wall… Ugh, it feels as if some sort of unstable frequency is mixed in. But they’re there. They’re alive and very agitated.”

“What about the situation?”

“I wouldn’t know. I don’t have clairvoyance.”

Our gazes met, and Aileen took a step forward.

“I’ll take the lead.”

Without hesitation, she moved forward.

-Pat, pat.

“Follow me.”

Like a faint light illuminating the darkness, her murky blonde hair glimmered in the narrow corridor.