I Became a Professional Horror Story Cleaner

First rule for avoiding getting lost.

If you’re lost, you should stay where you are and not move.

That’s something everyone knows, right?

‘But how long am I supposed to wait?’

At this very moment, the Jeong twins were fighting a life-or-death battle against [The Dead] in Exhibition Hall 3.

In the end, instead of continuing to wait for Team Leader Jo, I decided to make my way forward on my own.

“Good thing I brought these adhesive markers…….”

They were something you could buy at any stationery store and had no special function, but they were perfect for marking the path.

The flickering lights scattered the dust suspended in the air, making the already murky atmosphere feel even more suffocating.

I had already gotten used to using the objects lying around everywhere as weapons to get the Failed Works off me, but finding a room that actually seemed important was another matter.

[Painting Room], [Temporary Waste Storage Area], [Wiring Room].

Of course, I opened all of them, but there was no trace of a delivery.

‘At this rate, I’m not going to find anything…….’

Just as I was beginning to regret my decision and think that maybe I should go back to look for Team Leader Jo……

“Woof!”

I heard a bark from the other end of the corridor.

I couldn’t see it clearly because of the poor lighting, but those two upright ears, the white fur, and the tail wagging energetically looked strangely familiar.

“The white dog……?”

I was sure of it.

It was the same dog I had briefly seen in Chodam Park.

“Woof, woof!”

How had it gotten in here?

Was it following me?

“Come here.”

I beckoned to the white dog with my hand, but the creature simply wandered around while maintaining some distance from me, showing no intention of approaching.

However, from the way it restlessly paced back and forth, it seemed like it was trying to make me look at it……

“Ah, do you want me to follow you?”

At that moment, I remembered what Myeong Haebin had told me.

‘It’s pretty famous in our company. Sometimes, while you’re working, you come across a white dog, but they say that if you trust it, you end up paying the price.’

It was obvious that it wasn’t a normal dog.

What kind of dog could freely enter and leave Horror Stories?

— Hihi, hihik!

“You’re persistent!”

I shook off a portrait that had been leaning beside the white dog and had crawled over to grab my ankle.

There was no doubt about it.

The Failed Works didn’t attack the white dog.

Something similar had happened in the park.

It had even brought me items that I hadn’t bought.

‘Is it not subject to the influence or rules of Horror Stories?’

What the hell was that dog?

“Whine, whine…….”

The white dog watched me anxiously while wandering around at a distance.

Even while doing that, it never stopped wagging its tail.

“All right. I have nothing to lose.”

Staying here would only mean continuing to be lost.

I decided to follow the white dog.

“Let’s go. Hey, do you know where the delivery is?”

“Whine?”

Obviously, it wasn’t going to answer me.

I didn’t even know whether it understood me, but the white dog seemed to have a very clear destination and moved ahead of me without stopping.

“This path keeps getting darker…….”

I was following it, yes, but the farther we went, the more obvious the corridor’s lack of maintenance became, and more and more light bulbs weren’t working.

Eventually, I reached a point where I could barely see what was in front of me.

Perhaps precisely because of that, the number of Failed Works appearing also decreased noticeably.

I turned on my phone’s flashlight and placed it in the chest pocket of my uniform, but the field of vision it could illuminate was limited.

“Woof! Woof!”

Even so, I somehow managed to keep moving by following its barks and feeling along the wall with my hand.

As I slowly moved forward, step by step.

“Ugh……!”

CRASH!

I unexpectedly tripped over an obstacle and fell forward, rolling across the floor.

My cheek burned as though I had scraped it against the poorly finished concrete.

“……”

“Hey, dog! Are you still there?”

As if by magic, the white dog’s barking stopped.

I couldn’t even hear the tapping of its paws anymore.

Absolute silence.

‘Is this why they said I shouldn’t trust the white dog?’

How the hell far had I come?

I struggled to get up after the fall and shone the flashlight on the floor.

What had tripped me was a large flashlight lying there.

‘I should’ve expected something like this after seeing how bad this path was.’

I wondered whether it still worked, so I picked up the heavy flashlight and pressed the power button.

At that instant, my field of vision opened up completely.

“……What is this?”

It wasn’t that the flashlight’s bulb had turned on.

Rather.

Would it be accurate to say that faintly luminous outlines had appeared around the objects and across the floor?

I followed with my eyes one of those outlines that looked like dog paw prints lined up across the dark floor.

When I touched it, I felt mud that still hadn’t completely dried, and the glow from the part I had wiped with my hand disappeared.

When I turned off the flashlight, those outlines disappeared and were no longer visible.

When I turned it back on, they reappeared.

Could this be a Recovered Object?

‘I found it inside a Horror Story, and it has an effect that a normal flashlight could never have.’

My knee and cheek still hurt from the fall, but I had unexpectedly obtained something useful.

Click.

The corridor seen through that flashlight was a completely different world from what I could observe with the naked eye.

The outlines of the Failed Works wandering in the distance appeared clearly defined, and the walls were covered in irregular stains, as though someone had splattered paint everywhere.

‘Does it show the boundaries of contamination or anomalies? Not bad.’

I decided to use the flashlight to follow the paw prints of the dog that had disappeared.

However, the paw prints ended in front of a half-open iron door.

The name of the room was [Storage Room].

“Wait. Storage Room?”

I thought I had heard something about this room.

Right.

It had been the docent in Exhibition Hall 1.

‘The face of Min Siyoung, age 24, was taken from the storage room, from the spare parts used to repair the works, but it seems that it also had a defect.’

Then was Min Siyoung in this storage room?

Filled with tension, I carefully pushed the door open.

The moment I opened it, I understood why that place was called [Storage Room].

It was a room where human bodies too damaged to be displayed as works and corpses were piled up carelessly, like mannequins destined to be discarded.

The floor I illuminated with the flashlight was covered in blood.

Being able to see the outlines wasn’t even useful anymore.

Every bloodstain glowed intensely everywhere, to the point that my eyes hurt and I had to turn off the flashlight.

“Whine, whimper…….”

From deep inside, where not even the light reached, I heard the white dog’s whimpers.

“Min Siyoung, are you here?”

“…….”

Instead of an answer, I heard weak, labored breathing.

Was she still alive?

“Woof!”

The white dog emerged from between the mannequins.

From the outside, it had looked like nothing more than a pile of bodies, but when I suppressed the revulsion they caused me and moved the corpses aside, I discovered a space behind them that could barely fit two people.

“……!”

The figure wearing a uniform with a blue line and a rat symbol underneath could hardly be considered a living person.

The skin of her face had been torn off, including both eyes, leaving the muscles and teeth underneath completely exposed. Although I couldn’t see it clearly, her abdomen was also soaked in blood.

“Whine…….”

The white dog licked that person’s uniform while whimpering pitifully.

‘She’s still alive.’

When I brought my hand close to where her nose should have been, now covered in coagulated blood, I felt her ragged breathing.

“Haah, ha…… hngh…… Team…… Leader?”

“Min Siyoung? What happened to you for you to end up like this?”

“I just…… touched it, and [The Dead] woke up…….”

The fact that she was still alive was a miracle.

Min Siyoung, who was mumbling incoherently as though lost in a dream, laboriously turned her head toward me.

“……Who…… are you.”

She could barely speak.

She didn’t even have enough strength left to get up.

“I’m a cleaner from Daecheonmyeong.”

“A clean……er? Haah, I’ve never…… heard of that.”

“I’ll bring Team Leader Jo.”

There was nothing I could do for her.

The only thing within my power was to find her direct superior and bring him here.

But Min Siyoung grabbed my wrist.

That hand was missing its index finger.

“Wai…… wait. Don’t…….”

“I’ll bring him right away.”

“Team…… Leader, no. Don’t…… bring him.”

“What?”

I stopped, unable to ignore the desperation with which she seemed to be squeezing out a voice that could barely emerge.

“Why? If you stay like this, you’ll die.”

“He abandoned me……. Cough.”

“Are you saying Team Leader Jo abandoned you?”

“[The Dead]…… [The Dead]…… woke up. Haah, haah…….”

[The Dead] woke up and Team Leader Jo abandoned Min Siyoung?

What the hell had happened?

But that wasn’t the only thing Min Siyoung wanted to tell me.

“Don’t…… trust him. That…… man……. You’ll die too…….”

It wasn’t difficult to believe.

Team Leader Jo had tried to abandon both the twins and me, and had even gone so far as to point a gun between my eyebrows.

At the same time, he was also the man who had used his own rescue item to save Seo Gitae.

But there was nothing I could do in that situation.

It was too dangerous outside to carry Min Siyoung on my back and get her out of there.

But I couldn’t stay here indefinitely either.

“I’m sorry. I’ll do everything I can to get you out of here as soon as possible.”

“Team Leader Jo, never…… Hngh, ngh…….”

Min Siyoung lost consciousness.

The hand that had been gripping my sleeve lost its strength and slowly fell.

“Whine, whimper…….”

The white dog, not knowing what to do, began licking Min Siyoung’s intact hand, but she didn’t react at all.

“Stay here with her for a while. You can do that, right?”

As though it had understood my words, the white dog calmly sat down in place.

I didn’t know what a dog could do, but it was better than leaving Min Siyoung completely alone.

After all, it had guided me here.

I abruptly left the storage room and returned to the corridor.

Just as I was wondering how the hell I was supposed to find Team Leader Jo again in such an enormous place, I heard running footsteps in the distance.

They were coming from the direction I had passed through.

“Team Leader?”

“What the hell, cleaner? How did you get all the way here?”

“By any chance……. Did you get lost too, Team Leader?”

Team Leader Jo didn’t answer.

However, his gaze shifted behind me.

There was another door not far from the storage room.

[Storage for Unexhibited Works].

The moment I turned my gaze toward that room, Team Leader Jo snapped his fingers to draw my attention back to him.

“I don’t know how the hell you got here before me, but I found it for you. Got it?”

Don’t tell me……?

This man had been wandering around the place on his own looking for the keyword I had mentioned, ‘delivery.’

What a petty and opportunistic guy.

Unable to hide my disgusted expression, I answered Team Leader Jo curtly.

“You’d better go to the storage room, Team Leader. Min Siyoung is there.”

“What?”

Team Leader Jo’s pupils visibly dilated.

Then he immediately burst out laughing.

“Hahaha! She’s still alive? Wow, that’s incredible. In here?”

Team Leader Jo knocked several times on the storage room door with his knuckles, causing the characteristic hollow sound of metal to echo through the corridor.

“She sure is lucky. So what?”

“Aren’t you going to see her?”

“Do you know why this Horror Story became Grade 3? Because of her.”

“……You mean Min Siyoung?”

“Yes! She decided to touch a work on her own, and [The Dead] thought that finger was the last piece it was missing and woke up. If she hadn’t done something that stupid, none of this shit would’ve happened. And you expect me to treat her kindly?”

Team Leader Jo swept his disheveled bangs back.

I vaguely remembered the memory I had perceived in [Wall of Faces].

‘Team Leader, it looks like this work is missing exactly one piece. Do you want me to examine it?’

The manual had also said that the work on the central platform was incomplete.

Then……

Had Min Siyoung touched [The Dead] without Team Leader Jo’s permission, and [The Dead], upon discovering that it was specifically missing a ‘finger,’ torn off Min Siyoung’s finger and awakened?

After waking up, [The Dead] would have chased Min Siyoung to obtain the other pieces it was missing, while Team Leader Jo ignored Min Siyoung during the pursuit, escaped alone, and later reentered with Seo Gitae.

If that was how it had happened, it would also explain why Min Siyoung’s face in [Wall of Faces] contained the fragment of the platform.

She must have been the person closest to it when [The Dead] awakened and shattered the platform.

If that really was what had happened……

‘What a disastrous team.’

The team member ignored her Team Leader’s orders, and the Team Leader abandoned his team member?

Without realizing it, I let out an incredulous laugh, causing Team Leader Jo to frown.

“Besides, what the hell do you expect me to do if I go see her now? Do you want me to drag along someone who’s already useless?”

If I analyzed it rationally, Team Leader Jo was right.

Regardless of what had happened between them, we couldn’t take Min Siyoung with us.

As someone outside their team, the only thing I could do was inform Team Leader Jo that she was still alive.

Intervening beyond that would be overstepping.

“I understand.”

“If you understand, open the damn door. The delivery you wanted so badly must be piled up in there.”

Team Leader Jo planted himself in front of me with one leg angled to the side, as if making sure I could see him perfectly.

His attitude was arrogant and unpleasant.

I pressed my lips together and, suppressing my irritation, walked past Team Leader Jo and grabbed the handle of [Storage for Unexhibited Works].

Clank.

The old iron door, which wasn’t locked, opened with a heavy scraping sound.

A strong smell of mold and rotten wood hit my nose.

Inside the spacious room were dozens of person-sized wooden crates, densely stacked on pallets.

“Are these the deliveries?”

“I didn’t receive reports of anything else that could be considered a delivery besides this.”

It certainly looked like merchandise that had been received and stored there……

‘How the hell am I supposed to find an angel among all this?’

I picked up a rusty crowbar lying in a corner and inserted it into a gap in the nearest crate.

Crack, crack!

After applying force and tearing off one of the planks, I looked through the opening.

Inside was a white sculpture.

It seemed to depict a human, but since it had no wings, it couldn’t be an angel.

“I don’t understand why the hell you’re looking for that ‘delivery.’ Don’t you feel sorry for those idiots who are trusting you?”

Ignoring his mockery, I pressed the switch on the Recovered Object, the large flashlight.

I intended to try absolutely everything within my power.

Click.

When that invisible light covered the room, the dozens of nearly identical wooden crates began to look completely different.

Most only had faint stains.

However, my gaze became fixed on a single crate sitting alone on a pallet.

‘That one.’

Within the field of vision provided by the flashlight, only that crate had a clearly defined outline.

As though it were completely covered in contamination.

“You found a pretty good Recovered Object. Looks like you’re quite lucky.”

Team Leader Jo tossed out that mocking remark as he wandered around me, then snatched the crowbar away.

“Let’s see what’s inside.”

“Team Leader. We don’t know what it contains! Be careful opening it!”

CRACK! CRUNCH!

The thick nails went flying, and the dust-covered planks were torn away.

Team Leader Jo was smashing the crate apart with the violence of a thug.

Then his movements abruptly stopped.

“This is…….”

There was an angel inside.

It was so exquisite and beautiful that it was hard to believe it had been carved from pure white marble.

The curves outlining the statue’s entire body were so fluid that it looked as though a living person had been sealed inside the stone, and the enormous pair of wings, with every feather individually carved, seemed capable of coming alive and moving at any moment.

However, that angel had been restrained with thick, crude iron chains.

Heavy chains wrapped around its limbs and wings, while its eyes and mouth had been sealed with adhesive tape.

As though someone had wanted to prevent a living creature from flying away.

Team Leader Jo and I stared into the crate, completely captivated.

Then an absentminded murmur escaped his lips.

“Hey, cleaner.”

“…….”

“You…… know what Angelos means?”

“You mean an angel?”

“That’s half right. It’s the origin of the word ‘angel.’ But the word itself means ‘messenger.’”

Messenger?

Then.

The word “messenger” engraved on the central platform could also be referring to this angel.

“Then, instead of placing [The Dead] on the platform, maybe we can place this ‘messenger,’ the angel……”

As I murmured that quietly, as though I had just understood the answer, the app updated.

[4. If you are an employee, exhibit the delivered angel.]

Now I understood why it had made me search for the delivery containing the angel.

Because it was the only work that could be exhibited on the unstable central platform.

The corners of Team Leader Jo’s lips rose as he let out an incredulous laugh.

“You, what the hell are you? No, that’s not important right now.”

With his pale hand, he grabbed my shoulder tightly.

“What are you doing? Load it up.”

With his other hand, Team Leader Jo pointed toward a folding handcart lying beside the crowbar in a corner of [Storage for Unexhibited Works].

I almost told him that he really was an expert at making other people do all the work until the very end, but I hurried over to the crate containing the angel.

However, perhaps because it was a stone statue, it didn’t move even a centimeter.

“To lift this by myself……. It’s too heavy!”

“You’re so weak. Do I have to grab it from this side?”

Only after two grown men struggled with it for quite some time did we manage to place the angel on the dusty cart.

The Failed Works lunged at us again on the way back.

However, Team Leader Jo shamelessly did nothing but push the cart while saying:

“You know, I’m missing an arm. You handle it.”

In the end, I had to deal with Team Leader Jo’s share of the Failed Works as well.

Only after a genuine struggle that left scratches on my cheek and parts of my clothes torn did we finally manage to return to Exhibition Hall 3.

But.

Exhibition Hall 3 was completely silent.

Don’t tell me……

Had the twins died?