What happens when a new employee successfully completes their probationary period?
Normally, there's a light congratulatory event and a gift presentation.
I just hadn't expected even a major corporation inside a Ghost Story to do the same.
[Now let's see... good heavens! We have twenty-two graduates this round, everyone! Wow, I wonder what HR is going to think?]
I wasn't curious in the slightest.
And the new hires sitting beside me were probably the same.
[No, this is seriously an incredible record. Unless this was a failure in difficulty balancing, you're an elite class. Elite.]
Silence settled over the lecture hall.
The host paid it no mind and cheerfully shouted,
[Then shall we pick the greatest elite among our elite employees?]
[The top scorer of this Field Operations Team new-hire class! One of the people who completed the evaluation and escaped in the shortest amount of time, and the person who recorded the highest overall score.]
The host raised a hand.
[Congratulations. Mr. Kim Soleum!]
Me?
[Mr. Kim Soleum?]
[This event can't end unless the gift gets delivered~ Come on up and receive it!]
Was this for real?
'Why....'
Anyway, I stood up.
I'd just been trapped inside a Ghost Story where you died if you didn't listen to the announcements. Anyone who heard an instruction like that and just stayed seated would be an idiot.
[Ah, the way you came right up without hesitation is so reassuring. You're quick to grasp the situation—makes it feel like you'd work very well in our department too, which is such a shame. Such a shame.]
So he must've been a superior from another department. Somehow that only made him seem even more obnoxious and contemptible.
I went up onto the stage and stood in front of the host.
[Now then, take your gift!]
What the host held out was a stiff paper shopping bag.
Inside the silver shopping bag stamped with the
[Don't be too disappointed that we didn't give you some extra-special gift just because you were the top scorer.]
I wasn't happy in the slightest.
I took the shopping bag and, twisting my neck so I wouldn't glare at the host, turned to step down—
"Check inside carefully."
What?
"What do you—"
[Now then, I'll call up the next new employee!]
At some point, the host had already taken hold of the microphone and was calling the next person.
As though no private aside had ever taken place.
"..."
Hmm.
I didn't waste any more time and stepped back down to my seat.
After that, the people from my train car, including Go Youngeun, also went up and received their gifts.
It didn't really mean anything, but Baek Saheon was called right after me.
"..."
"..."
He was still sitting beside me, but he didn't say a word.
To be exact, we didn't even make eye contact. Judging by the way he was pressing at his left eye, it certainly seemed like he had "turned in the lost item."
'He'll figure out how to get himself to a hospital.'
[Calling the next person. Kim Jiwon!]
The later they were called, the more people came up whose appearance looked somehow off, or whose gait or eyes seemed strange, to receive their gifts.
'...Were they trapped inside the Ghost Story for a long time?'
On the surface, it had seemed like everyone came to their senses in the lecture hall at the same time, but inside the Ghost Story, there had clearly been differences in escape times.
Trying to imagine how long they had been trapped in there sent a chill down my spine.
Still, in the sense that they had escaped at all, maybe they were better off than the other seventy-eight.
[You all received your gifts safely, right?]
At last, the ceremony ended.
No one answered, but a strange tension and something like anticipation hung faintly in the lecture hall.
The expectation that maybe now they would let us go.
To be honest, I had been half expecting it too. It felt like things should be wrapping up by now.
But.
[However... this company does not hire every single person who completes the course.]
"...?!"
[You always get people who pass through sheer luck.]
No way.
[But Baekilmong Co., Ltd. is a company that never forgets the great social value of fairness.]
[Probationary employees like that receive a major deduction in absolute evaluation.]
The host clearly did nothing.
No cliché finger snap, no dramatic stare, not even some performance like the lecture hall lights going out.
And yet....
[As I said, we catch every free rider.]
People started melting.
"...!"
All around us, a few people began to melt away as though their figures were collapsing into mush.
There were no screams. No movement.
'Fuck!'
The person in front of me clapped a hand over his mouth to stop himself from screaming.
I whipped my head away too.
But my eyes had already seen it.
'Gone.'
Half the people from my car had vanished.
Everyone except me, Go Youngeun, Baek Saheon, and the new hire Baek Saheon had attacked.
"..."
[To the remaining thirteen new employees: congratulations! You have become full-time employees with excellent scores!]
Not a single person clapped in joy.
In the frozen silence, only one person, panicking, stammered,
"I quit, I quit.... I'll resign."
But the host remained completely at ease.
[Huh? You'd give up such a great job? Aw, at least hear about the benefits before you decide.]
From behind me, Go Youngeun cried out, almost retching the words.
"Then if we hear the benefits, can we still resign afterward? Without penalty?"
[That's correct. You can all resign without so much as a hair harmed~]
The host's words were smooth and overflowing with confidence.
And that was when I realized it.
'Here it comes.'
The whip was over.
Now came the carrot.
...The "benefit" that I knew.
[Now then, let me introduce our company's signature benefit!]
The reason employees kept working in the Field Operations Team even after experiencing this insane situation the moment they joined the company.
[Employee Benefit]Wish Ticket
Something appeared on the giant screen in the lecture hall.
A beautiful crystal bottle with sleek, flowing curves.
Plink.
Inside the bottle, a strange iridescent liquid shimmered and rippled.
It undulated.
Every color, every texture—down to the ripples created by the liquid's movement—was so beautiful and strange it gave off an uncanny sense of wrongness.
Silence fell.
[Shall we take a closer look?]
When the host pressed a button, the beam-projector screen rose. And behind it, a table that had been hidden came into view.
On the black table sat the very same dazzling bottle we had just seen on screen.
"...!"
The liquid in the bottle swayed on its own, scattering beautiful light brightly enough to illuminate the entire lecture hall.
That bizarre thing, so strange it made you doubt whether an object like that could really exist in reality, was....
[You all joined us knowing that our company is famous as a highly successful pharmaceutical company, right? How advanced must our technology be if we even made hair-loss medicine?]
[But in reality, our main product is something else entirely... and it's this.]
The host steadied his trembling hand, then put on white gloves.
And with great care, he lifted the crystal bottle from the table and held it out so the employees could see it more clearly.
[The name of this medicine is 'Wish Ticket.']
[Its effect is... exactly what it sounds like. If you drink this medicine, any wish at all will come true.]
"...!"
[You don't believe it? But there are truckloads of your seniors and supervisors who took this medicine and got their wish.]
[Let me show you a demonstration first.]
The host tore open the packaging of the medicine on display and... dumped it straight into his mouth in one go!
[Today was my Wish Ticket collection day, after all. Haha!]
And everyone in the lecture hall instantly understood what the host's "wish" had been.
The moment he drank the Wish Ticket,
the face of the host, who had looked to be in his mid-to-late forties, rapidly tightened and flushed with color.
His body firmed up, and his hair regained shine and thickness.
Yes, regained it.
That appearance from youth, the time in life when the body overflowed with vitality and growth!
[Yahoo!]
The host, now looking like a high school student, threw his fist into the air in excitement.
[What do you think? Ahem—a simple way to put it would be rejuvenation!]
Even his voice had grown younger.
A different kind of shocked silence fell over the lecture hall.
This was... the silence of people being shaken.
The host pointed toward the new hires in the room.
[Your department, the Field Operations Team, always gets excellent personnel evaluations. On average, it takes less than half the service time of other teams before people bring home a Wish Ticket....]
[All ten of the fastest Wish Ticket recipients were from the Field Operations Team!]
Gulp.
Somewhere in the room, someone swallowed audibly.
Of course, it was all wordplay.
In reality, it was basically nothing more than hazard pay.
'Before those ten fastest recipients, dozens or hundreds probably died in the line of duty.'
In other words, it was bait—something close to a glossy prize with rot underneath.
But....
'There are definitely people who got one.'
It wasn't a scam.
[Now then, I'll take que—oh, employee!]
One of the new hires quietly raised a hand and asked in a rough voice,
"Can it bring the dead back to life?"
He was a tall man with brown hair.
[Ah. You know the thing you always hear in stories like this? 'The one wish that is impossible in principle'....]
[...That's what you expected me to say, right!]
The host flung a hand high into the air.
[Wish Ticket grants the drinker's wish, no matter what.]
"...!"
[Of course, as long as the correct method is used. Please refer to the employee mall for detailed usage instructions.]
"..."
The questioner fell silent again. But the disturbance among the new hires only began to spread more fiercely.
The host didn't miss his chance.
[Then please check the other benefits on the screen and in the guide enclosed in your gift envelope... and shall we decide at this point?]
Whoosh.
With a short sound, the rear doors of the lecture hall swung open wide.
[Anyone who wishes to decline employment may leave and pick up the paperwork at the desk outside.]
[But if you're thinking, since I got in anyway, I'll give the company a proper try....]
The host gestured.
[Then please put on the mask inside your gift bag.]
A mask? Ah.
'So this is the point where they hand it out.'
[You'd call it custom these days, wouldn't you? It's meant to express your individuality perfectly.]
[Well... this one doesn't have any special function yet. But that's all it is.]
I tightened my grip on my smartphone.
I couldn't check in a place with this many eyes on me, but if I could look at the Darkness Exploration Record page reconstructed by the Memorial Grip Tok, it would no doubt say this:
---------------------=
Darkness Exploration Record / Baekilmong Co., Ltd.
/ Departments
Trivia
Employees belonging to the Field Operations Team wear masks while out in the field, and these masks are said to be issued after the hiring orientation.
According to Employee D, the theme of the masks is determined by the year of entry.
For example, an agent wearing an ant mask and an agent wearing a praying mantis mask are highly likely to be same-year hires.
---------------------=
In short, it was practically the symbol of the Field Operations Team of Baekilmong Co., Ltd.
'The day would come when I'd receive one myself.'
It was a strange feeling in more ways than one.
Of course, ninety percent of me wanted to bolt out of here right now, throw down the mask, and shout that I was refusing the job.
Please, just let me live.
'But... even if I resign, this world itself is a sewer.'
That damned "Darkness paranormal phenomenon" was already scattered all over the place.
It was the kind of world where you could very easily become just another extra in a ghost story and have your life end in a rare and memorable way.
'Haa....'
So maybe, rather than that, the survival rate would actually be higher if I worked as an employee with issued equipment, a salary, and even a final reward to aim for while trying to transfer departments....
'Besides, if I want to go back to my original world, that Wish Ticket is probably the most promising option I've got.'
Either way, a coward like me was never going to survive long in this world. It made more sense to look for a way to escape the world itself.
So if I chose the answer with the highest odds as rationally as possible, as rationally as I could....
'I have to join.'
It was driving me insane, but there was no other way. Damn it.
In the end, I swallowed back tears and opened the envelope.
Then I put my hand inside to pull out the mask, but—
"...?"
Something came out stuck to it.
───
If needed,
010-0153-24865
───
A business card?
It looked as though someone had whited out the space where the name and title should have been and scribbled in that phrase instead.
'...Did the host put this in?'
I looked around, but no one else seemed to have some business card stuck to their mask.
'Later.'
I peeled the card off, tucked it back into the envelope, and pulled out only the mask.
It had a smooth texture and a basic shape that looked like it would only cover the area above the nose.
What was surprising was that everyone around me was already trying to put on their masks.
Without a single exception.
'...After everything they've just been through, not one of them is running away?'
There was only one variable.
Wish Ticket.
'Did they screen from the start for the kinds of people who'd be willing to stake their lives on a Wish Ticket?'
As I looked around the lecture hall, where people silently put on their masks without a single one of them saying they would resign, I felt something I couldn't quite put into words.
Because I was about to join them too.
'There's nothing for it.'
I brought my mask up to my face.
And the shape of the mask really did change.
I could feel it lengthening a little, turning uneven and ridged against my cheeks and forehead....
"..."
I reached up and felt it with my hand.
It was a vivid mask with horns protruding from it, marked with a bizarre grain-like pattern.
Wait, antlers shaped like branches?
'...Velvet antlers? A deer?'
Though it looked too strange to be just a deer.
Wearing the mask with a dubious expression, I looked around. When my eyes met Go Youngeun's, her sheep-like mask turned toward me, and she made an awkward face.
Aside from her, the sight of new hires in suits seated all around the hall wearing masks of everything from elephants to goats was deeply bizarre and unsettling.
Just like employees of a company that managed Ghost Stories should be.
[Once again, congratulations from the bottom of our hearts on joining the company!]
Clap clap clap.
The PowerPoint advanced, playing the sound of recorded applause.
[Employment Confirmed]
'So this is how it ended up....'
Mask or no mask, the moment my head started to go faint at the thought of the work ahead—
suddenly, the memo pad appeared in midair again.
"...!"
The same memo pad... the one that had spat out the Memorial Grip Tok goods for me.
[Darkness Exploration Record Real Goods Box]
-Unlocked permission to use a new item! (!)
Huh?