I Became a Professional Horror Story Cleaner

Thinking that maybe I had misread it, I rubbed my eyes and looked again.

[Human Exhibition: On the Infinity of the Human Body]

Exploring the most beautiful material: the human body.

The country’s largest interactive exhibition, reinterpreting the human form from an artistic and aesthetic perspective.

Permitted Number of Visitors: 2–4 People.

I had read it perfectly.

Shit.

A Human Exhibition?

The high school and the park had at least pretended to have normal names, but this one was outright saying, ‘I’m going to kill you.’

“Hanmu, Hanmu.”

Jeong Dohan called out to me while I remained completely stiff, trembling intensely on the inside.

“Are you listening to me?”

“Ah, yes. I’m listening.”

I hadn’t heard a single thing.

I was too nervous.

“You can’t open that. The moment you do, it’ll drag you inside.”

I immediately handed the pamphlet to Jeong Dohan.

The sensation it had left on my hands was unpleasant.

“Is this also a ‘recovered object’?”

“Oh, something like that. Apparently, it was mixed in with other ordinary pamphlets that anyone could take.”

So someone had actually thought to open something that suspicious.

Well, to be fair, the exhibition’s title was so strange that anyone might have opened it out of curiosity.

“It won’t be as difficult as you imagine. The Rats have already done practically all the work, and we’re just going to take advantage of it.”

“Really? I heard it went up from Grade 4 to Grade 3.”

“It’s better than going in without any information. I heard they’ve already been working on dismantling it for two weeks.”

They hadn’t managed to solve it in two weeks?

Now that I thought about it, Team Leader Yong had also implied before that he hadn’t expected me to complete a Horror Story in a single day.

Of course.

The achievement record required one hundred points. If it were possible to earn one every day, everyone would have already made their wishes and quit.

“Why are you going without me?! Boss and I can go together!”

Myeong Haebin protested, her cheeks completely red with indignation.

However, Jeong Dohan smiled calmly and poked her cheeks with a finger, as if he found her adorable.

“Those are our Team Leader’s orders. If you have any complaints, go complain to him.”

“I will!”

Myeong Haebin even threw down the bag of cleaning supplies she had been preparing and immediately ran out into the hallway.

Jeong Dohyeon, who had merely watched her leave, turned toward me.

“She’s pretty simple, isn’t she?”

“You mean Haebin?”

“Who else?”

Beside him, Jeong Dohan burst out laughing.

“Hahaha. That’s why our Team Leader is so protective of her. Well, shall we go?”

“Aren’t we going to wait for her?”

“Our Team Leader has been out since yesterday. She’ll be a while.”

“……”

So he had deceived Myeong Haebin without batting an eye.

Poor Haebin.

“Don’t you need the Team Leader’s authorization to go as support?”

“As long as we come back alive, I suppose he won’t scold us too much.”

What an irresponsible answer.

Was it really okay for a company to operate like this?

As I repacked the bag Myeong Haebin had left lying there, Jeong Dohyeon spoke to me.

“My brother was really happy because he said he’d finally have a chance to work with you. Just make sure you bring him back alive.”

“……I’ll do my best. By the way, where are we going?”

“We have to meet up with the others. I’m only going along to see you off.”

The more I saw them, the clearer it became that the twins weren’t just physically different, but also had different personalities.

If Jeong Dohyeon was calm and measured, Jeong Dohan could be described as cheerful and outgoing.

And the latter was also extremely sociable, so he wouldn’t stop talking to me.

“Hanmu, how old are you?”

“Twenty-eight.”

“We’re the same age! How about we stop speaking formally to each other?”

“I don’t mind, but I’m more comfortable speaking this way.”

“Really? Hey, Dohyeon! He says I can speak informally to him!”

“I’d rather you didn’t…….”

It seemed Jeong Dohan didn’t know how to accept rejection either.

The agreed meeting point with the Rats was the lobby on the ground floor of Daecheonmyeong.

As befitted two rival groups, they had chosen a place that wasn’t close to either team’s office.

“New face. You’re the cleaner?”

The Rats were already there.

A man with black hair slicked back with pomade frowned when he saw me.

Behind him was also the short-haired man I had met in the cafeteria.

“Well, even their Team Leader came. Ours isn’t here. Hahaha.”

“It’s our case, so I had to come. I believe I asked him the question.”

They say sensitive people easily recognize other sensitive people.

The Rats’ Team Leader didn’t just seem sensitive, but fussy as well.

Maybe it was because of his glasses, or the shirt and tie he wore beneath his uniform, but he gave off more of an impression of being a manager at a major corporation than someone who risked his life working in the field for a Horror Story company.

“I’m Kim Hanmu. As you said, I belong to the Cleaning Team.”

I extended my hand to greet him, but he ignored it even after seeing it.

Instead, he gestured with his eyes toward the man standing behind him.

“Jo Yangseon. Call me Team Leader Jo. And he’s Seo Gitae.”

What the hell was wrong with his personality?

No.

Endure it.

I couldn’t expect to get along with everyone in the company.

Team Leader Jo looked directly at Jeong Dohan and beckoned with his fingers.

“If you’re done wasting time, give back the pamphlet you took.”

“Come on, don’t say I took it. Say I brought it for you so you wouldn’t have to carry it.”

“Don’t you know I hate wordplay?”

So he had taken it without permission?

Well, with that personality, it didn’t seem like Team Leader Jo would have handed it over voluntarily either.

“Take care, Hanmu. I’ll explain everything to Haebin.”

As if he had anticipated Team Leader Jo’s exact reaction, Jeong Dohyeon smiled gently and waved goodbye.

For some reason, I felt as though I had become an accomplice.

Even though I hadn’t deliberately deceived her.

The pamphlet passed into Team Leader Jo’s hands and was opened.

The pages, stuck together by blood, pus, and who knew what else, separated with an unpleasant wet sound.

Riiip―.

The intuition that I had just willingly stepped into a carefully prepared trap weighed down my entire body.

A wave of nausea struck me along with the darkness, as though I had been locked inside a cramped container and shaken dozens of times.

“……Urgh.”

I didn’t know when it had started, but a light so unnaturally white that it pierced through my eyelids was assaulting my optic nerves.

Only then did I open my eyes.

In front of me were spotless white walls, floor, and ceiling.

‘Is this the Human Exhibition?’

Unlike me, who was still disoriented, the others seemed accustomed to entering this way.

“Haah…… I was already sick of this place, and…… Hmm?”

“What? How did you get in?”

“Huh?!”

Team Leader Jo and Seo Gitae, who were standing in front of me just as they had been before we entered, turned to look at me.

Jeong Dohan did too.

No.

Was there someone even farther behind me?

Without thinking, I followed their gazes and turned around.

I couldn’t help but stare in bewilderment.

“How did you get in?”

Jeong Dohyeon, who had kept a little distance so he wouldn’t get involved, was looking around in complete confusion.

Team Leader Jo, Seo Gitae, Jeong Dohan, and me.

There were already four of us.

We had reached the limit.

Jeong Dohan also looked confused.

“Huh? No, but why? Why was I able to get in?”

“Only two to four people are supposed to be allowed inside. Then why……?”

As if he couldn’t even be bothered with it, Team Leader Jo waved a hand and turned away.

“Maybe it’s because the grade went up? Figure it out yourselves.”

He reached into the exhibition booth marked [TICKET], took something out, and passed through the turnstile.

“Where are you going?”

“Do we have to walk around with you? You’re supposed to be exceptional talents, aren’t you? Figure it out yourselves.”

The one who answered my question was Seo Gitae.

They didn’t enter the area marked [Exhibition Hall 1].

They went through a door labeled [STAFF ONLY].

Clang.

The door closed, leaving the twins and me alone.

“……They’re incredible.”

“Now that you’ve dealt with them, you understand, right? I told you those guys were no joke.”

It was as though a hurricane had just swept through.

Jeong Dohyeon spoke cautiously.

“Hanmu, by any chance…… do you know how to clear this Horror Story? You too, hyung. Didn’t you hear anything?”

“Ah, that was in the Rats’ data―. Ah! Those damn bastards!”

Jeong Dohan, who had just realized something, shouted and pointed at the door.

That was it.

The reason Jeong Dohan had been so confident was that the Rats had been entering and leaving this Horror Story for some time and had gathered information about it.

However, those two Rats, afraid that we might steal their achievements, had gone off alone without sharing a single strategy with us.

They say the axe you trust is the one that ends up cutting your foot, but we had been cut by an axe we had never trusted in the first place.

‘So they want to play it that way.’

They knew the Horror Story was dangerous.

They knew we had no information.

And yet they had deliberately abandoned us……

Don’t they think they crossed the line?

“What criteria are used to determine who performed better?”

“Are you talking about the stickers that get placed on the achievement record?”

“Yes.”

Jeong Dohan seemed to wonder why I was asking, but soon answered.

“In our case, it would be whoever placed the most dismantling markers. That’s more or less how it’s measured.”

“And what if, instead of dismantling it, I make it disappear entirely?”

“Then the credit would be yours, Hanmu.”

“Those stickers looked like they could be peeled off. They can be transferred, right?”

“Yeah. Though it’s almost never done.”

Good.

Decided.

“I’ll have them add one more sticker to your achievement record, Dohan.”

“Wait, wait. Your sticker? You’re saying you’ll give it to me?”

“Yes.”

There’s a saying that you don’t compete to win, but to piss off your opponent.

They were the ones who crossed the line first.

I’d have to make them regret it if I wanted to sleep peacefully tonight, wouldn’t I?

“Are you serious? No, first of all, are you really sure you can make it disappear?”

“Hyung, what did you think everything Haebin said meant?”

“I thought she was simply praising him too much.”

By now, the app should have updated.

[Completion Condition: Exhibit a work in Exhibition Hall 3.]

It is recommended that you listen carefully to the audio guide and appreciate the works according to its instructions.

Good. It updated……

[DANGER!]

Snatch!

Before I could finish reading the rules……

No.

I had barely managed to read the first one when something snatched my phone away.

“What?!”

It was black as though it had been covered in paint, but it was unmistakably shaped like a human hand.

Holding my phone between its thumb and index finger, it ran across the floor using only its middle and ring fingers before slipping beneath the turnstile.

“What the hell? Hanmu, don’t tell me that’s your phone?”

“Yes!”

And it wasn’t just a phone.

‘It’s my lifeline!’

Without the app, I couldn’t check the rules.

And that wasn’t all.

I wouldn’t be able to use any of the functions the app had given me either, such as [Dictionary] or [Waste Separation].

In other words, going through a Grade 3 Horror Story without it was equivalent to suicide.

‘And obviously I won’t be able to beat the Rats either!’

Without even hesitating, I jumped over the turnstile.

“Hanmu, be careful!”

“I already checked!”

There was no one in the ticket booth at the entrance to the exhibition.

[Free Admission for All Humans]

There was only an empty basket that seemed to have contained something before and that brief notice, so there probably wouldn’t be a problem.

I didn’t have time to stop and examine it carefully either.

‘If I’m lucky, I can still catch it……!’

But just as I was about to charge after the hand, Jeong Dohan grabbed me by the shoulder.

“Don’t go alone. It’s dangerous. You can buy another phone.”

Tap, tap, tap, tap!

While I lost that opportunity, the hand slipped beneath the opaque curtain of [Exhibition Hall 1].

Shit.

No!

I abruptly shook off Jeong Dohan’s hand.

“I need that phone.”

“What, did you smear honey on it or something?”

“I smeared my life on it. You two can follow me at your leisure if you want.”

Leaving behind Jeong Dohan, who was holding up the hand I had brushed away and staring at me in bewilderment, I pulled aside the curtain leading into Exhibition Hall 1.

“……This really is incredible.”

This was no small exhibition.

The hall, which resembled an enormous art museum, seemed to have already been thoroughly explored by the Rats, as every work had a dismantling marker attached to it like a seizure tag.

But among all of them, what caught my attention most were the countless human wrists.

Someone spoke to me.

“Hello. I am the docent assigned to assist you during your visit.”

The creature that had introduced itself as a docent had absolutely nothing on its face.

It looked as though its completely bald scalp had been stretched downward and placed over its face.

Only the bridge of its nose protruded.

Its eyes, mouth, and ears were completely covered by peach-colored skin, beneath which the capillaries were clearly visible.

And despite that grotesque appearance, it wore an impeccably neat suit.

“The theme of Hall 1 is ‘Reinterpretation of Parts.’”

“……I see.”

The docent’s fingernail-less fingers pointed toward one of the works.

They were the wrists I had been looking at.

Countless human wrists hung in the air, swaying like a mobile.

The surfaces where they had been amputated were excessively clean and didn’t have a single drop of blood on them, to the point that they looked like artificial models.

However, some hands had nail art.

Others had calluses.

Moles.

Details no one would ever bother reproducing if they were merely models.

‘They must be real human hands.’

Those things that had once been part of someone’s body all hung at the same height and at the same angle.

Their arrangement almost seemed to boast about the fact that they had become a work of art.

And that was precisely what turned my stomach.

“Would you like to know the name of this work?”

No.

I wasn’t interested.

Because I had just found the black hand jumping among the mobile of swaying hands.

The thief that stole my phone.

“No.”

I lunged toward the world’s most horrifying mobile as the docent explained the work in a completely neutral voice.

“The name of this work is ‘Ten Thousand Left Hands.’”

Was it because the docent had finished uttering those words?

Or because I had jumped into the middle of them?

For an instant, I had the impression that every component of the work known as [Ten Thousand Left Hands] had shuddered at the same time.