There Are No Humans in the Monster Company

I let out a deep sigh at the throbbing headache and downed the last of the beer in one gulp.

The cold alcohol went down my esophagus, but perhaps because of the weight of what I had just heard, I still felt as though my insides were burning.

I set the crushed can on the table and turned my head toward Director Moon Ara, who remained seated calmly in the darkness.

“I’d like to know why you personally came to tell all this to a low-ranking employee like me.”

At my question, Director Moon Ara let out a brief snort of laughter.

“I already told you. I’d rather you didn’t die. Personally, I’d like you to stay completely out of this whole affair.”

She swept her long white hair to one side, releasing a faint scent of lily of the valley and bergamot.

For an instant, I had the feeling that all the faces embedded in her human-skin coat were looking at me in unison with pity.

“Of course, that’s something the executives will decide, and it’s beyond my authority. Executive Director Gu, despite being angry with Team Leader Baek Jaeryeong, is in favor of both continuing the Fairy-Tale Land Project and having Extraction Team 1 participate.”

Her completely white eyes gleamed with a cold, strange light.

“If they determine that the situation is serious enough, the company will even consider sending me or Team Leader Go Gyeol into the field.”

“At least I won’t feel lonely.”

“And if they’re willing to mobilize even the main forces of the Order Control Room, that also means Executive Director Ahn is staking his life on this project.”

Would I be able to survive surrounded by monsters like those?

Director Moon Ara watched me silently for a few moments before speaking in a low voice.

“Jeong Haeil.”

“Yes.”

“Do you want to come to the Security Team?”

It had been quite a while since I had heard that offer.

She glanced once at my empty beer can and continued in a light tone, as though she were simply inviting me out for a walk.

“If you come to the Security Team, there’ll be no reason for an ordinary team member like you to participate in the Fairy Tale Land Project. And even if they decide to mobilize the Security Team personnel, I could personally protect you.”

It was a tempting offer.

When I first met Director Moon Ara, she had made me the same proposal.

Back then, I had rejected it for two reasons.

One was the strange bond I had developed with my superiors in Extraction Team 1.

The other was my vague impression that there had to be some reason Manager Myeon had personally selected me, and that reason was directly related to my survival.

Although quite a lot of time had passed since I joined the company, that reason was still shrouded in fog.

‘It’s already happened several times.’

And this offer carried far more weight than the previous ones.

It wasn’t simply about transferring me to another position.

She was offering me a safe way out of what would undoubtedly be the most dangerous place I had faced since joining the company.

I thought about it for a moment.

You can never completely know another person’s intentions.

I had always tried to understand them, and little by little, my success rate had improved, but in this place, all of that had become useless again.

More than everything I had learned, it was my instincts and intuition that pointed me toward the path to survival.

And, strange as it seemed, right now my instincts were telling me to keep moving straight ahead.

I raised my head and looked directly into Director Moon Ara’s eyes.

“I appreciate that you’ve offered so many times, but…… I think I’ll stay in Extraction Team 1. There’s no need to offer again.”

The words had come out of my own mouth, but even after saying them, I felt like a complete lunatic.

Because I had just made it clear that I was definitively rejecting that option.

Director Moon Ara’s eyebrows rose almost imperceptibly.

“This time, I really wasn’t expecting your answer.”

I continued while fiddling with the empty can.

“I still haven’t figured out why Manager Myeon went to the trouble of personally choosing me.”

“I could give you the answer in his place.”

“I feel like it shouldn’t be that way. Besides, you yourself said that prying into other people’s secrets is rude.”

“A woman’s heart is fickle.”

Director Moon Ara leaned back with a strange smile that was impossible to interpret.

“What a shame. Truly, what a shame. Even so, haven’t we become much closer than before?”

“But there’s still a difference in rank between us.”

And quite a large one.

As large as the difference between Supervisor Shik, Assistant Manager Son, Manager Batori, and Deputy Director Mok.

Director Moon Ara let out another brief snort of laughter.

She lightly touched the back of the human-skin coat hanging from the hanger. Then, among the countless body parts embedded in it, a man’s nose located almost at the very bottom split in two and spat out another can of beer that was still cold.

Hiss—

The refreshing sound of a new can opening broke the silence.

We drank the beer in silence.

As I absentmindedly watched the white foam bubbling around the opening of the can, I cautiously asked a question that had been building in a corner of my chest for quite some time.

“Why do you care so much about me?”

It was something I had been thinking about for a long time. For it to be simple goodwill, what she did for me was far too exceptional.

From offering me a position on the Security Team to coming to my apartment after work to tell me in advance something that, in any case, I was going to hear the next day.

That also proved that this employee, like Manager Myeon and Manager Batori, wanted something from me.

Director Moon Ara stopped just as she was about to drink.

She remained silent for a long while, the can held near her lips, lost in thought.

The relaxed smile she usually wore had disappeared from her expressionless face, and her white eyes seemed submerged in something even deeper than the darkness beyond the window.

After a few moments, she lowered the can and asked in a terribly calm voice, completely devoid of her usual softness.

“Do you want me to be honest? Or would you prefer a pleasant answer?”

Perhaps because of the sudden change in atmosphere, my mouth felt strangely dry.

“I want to hear the truth.”

“Yeah. I knew you’d say that.”

She lightly shook the can.

The sound of the beer sloshing inside seemed especially loud.

“If I wanted to lie to you, I’d say it’s because you’re the only useful one in this company. But if I’m being honest with you…….”

Director Moon Ara leaned forward.

When her face came within mere centimeters of mine, that distinctive scent of hers suddenly enveloped me, a mixture of strange coolness and a faint fragrance.

“Because you’re handsome.”

“…….”

“I like pretty things and handsome men.”

“I knew you weren’t going to answer me.”

“No, I’m serious. Do you know how difficult it is to find a handsome man around here? And one who’s still sane is even rarer.”

Director Moon Ara let out a small laugh.

It was a light laugh, but there was a strange emptiness hidden within it.

Instead of answering, I finished my beer. After laughing for a while, her laughter gradually faded until silence returned.

She simply gazed at me with narrowed eyes.

There was something even more intense than before in her gaze, a kind of distant contemplation whose nature I couldn’t understand.

“I mean it. It would be a shame if you got ruined so soon.”

She set down the can and leaned slightly toward me.

“Fairy Tale Land is full of horrible things capable of ruining the aesthetics of what’s normal. The Blinded, the Dimensional Entities, even the Strategic Planning Office. When I imagine you rolling around covered in blood among all those things…….”

Director Moon Ara paused briefly and tapped her lips with a slender finger.

“It seems like a bit of a waste.”

Rather than concern born from affection, her attitude resembled that of a collector worried about a well-preserved antique.

Her gaze made me strangely uncomfortable, so I fiddled with the crushed can for no reason.

“I’ll be careful not to get ruined.”

“I hope so.”

She took another sip of beer.

For a moment, it occurred to me that perhaps Director Moon Ara hadn’t come simply to give me information, but to spend her final respite before heading to the battlefield gazing at a toy called ‘me.’

“Even if you raise…… a dozen dogs…….”

Suddenly, as she absentmindedly gazed outside with the beer can in her hand, a soft melody escaped Director Moon Ara’s lips.

The rhythm and intonation stretched in a strange way, but the melody contained an inexplicable sadness that seemed to scrape coldly against some corner of my chest.

“How could…… that dog be so hateful……?”

“Director Moon?”

Even when I called out to her, she didn’t look away.

She merely stared at her own white reflection in the window as she slowly continued, as though retracing an extremely ancient memory.

“When the one I hate arrives…… it wags its tail from side to side…… runs up and down…….”

I felt as though the air in the room twisted.

For some reason, it was strangely cold.

“When the one I love arrives…… it kicks its hind legs…… rolls from side to side, whimpering…….”

The melody abruptly stopped.

Director Moon Ara turned her head toward me.

Instead of her usual gentle smile, there was an unfathomable distance in her eyes that was difficult to explain.

“Is that…… some kind of sijo?”

“Yes. It’s a pastime.”

She downed the remaining beer in one gulp and raised the corners of her lips considerably more than usual.

About five millimeters.

“Give me your phone.”

“Excuse me?”

The request caught me by surprise, but I didn’t even have a chance to refuse.

When I handed her the phone, I opened my mouth, ready to cooperate.

“Director, the password is…….”

Without even thinking about it, she entered my password with complete ease and began tapping the screen.

Fine.

I quietly closed my mouth before I started questioning it.

It wouldn’t be that strange for the head of the Security Team to know the phone password of an ordinary employee.

She entered her number, saved it, and handed the phone back to me with a satisfied expression.

“Come to think of it, I don’t think we’d even exchanged numbers.”

“That’s because I can’t make calls.”

Director Moon Ara looked at me in confusion.

Without saying anything, I showed her the ‘No Service’ message on the screen and then pointed toward the scenery beyond the window.

There were no streetlights.

Not even a cat passing along the street.

Even darkness itself didn’t exist.

Only emptiness.

Ever since my apartment had become physically connected to the company, that window had been nothing more than a transparent wall that served no purpose.

Director Moon Ara drank a little more while gazing into that emptiness. Shortly afterward, she let out a small exclamation and nodded.

“Ah…… is it still like this?”

“Yes. It’s been like this ever since I joined the company.”

At my words, Director Moon Ara alternated between looking at the window and at me with a strange expression.

“Executive Director Seol should have told him something. Manager Myeon really is overprotective. Move the things out of that wardrobe.”

I hurriedly removed the few clothes hanging inside, exposing the empty wooden wall at the back.

Director Moon Ara closed the wardrobe again and placed a slender hand against its firmly shut door.

“Deviated sphere, distorted poetry and epithelium, proliferation of the anomaly.”

Her lips began moving in a strange rhythm.

Her low, recitative voice made the air in the room vibrate.

“Distortion of orientation, shed molt.”

It was a sequence of words too sharp to be mere murmurs and too physiological to be a spell.

“Necrosis of the boundary.”

She spoke the final word.

However, nothing changed before my eyes.

The wardrobe remained the same old wooden cabinet, and the wallpaper was still just as yellowed.

When I looked at her with a dumbfounded expression, Director Moon Ara smiled and gestured with her chin.

“Can you bring me the coat?”

I reached toward the human-skin coat hanging from the hanger.

The disturbingly smooth and warm sensation of human skin brushed against my fingertips.

I did my best to ignore the shiver caused by feeling the countless body parts writhing in response to my touch and handed it to her.

Director Moon Ara put on the coat with practiced ease and grabbed the wardrobe handle.

“See you tomorrow. Don’t be late. Oh, and if you go too far away without your phone or equipment…….”

Click.

The wardrobe door opened again, and Director Moon Ara finished her sentence.

“You die?”

As soon as she said it, she opened the door completely and stepped into the darkness inside without hesitation.

“Director?”

At that bewildering sight, I immediately grabbed the wardrobe door and flung it open.

Beyond the narrow space that should have been completely empty stretched a familiar and chilling landscape.

Cold fluorescent lights illuminated a checkered tile floor that seemed to extend endlessly.

The endless corridors of Limited Company Where the Dead End Up with Ghosts opened before me like a pair of jaws.

“What the hell is this?”

Now not only the front door, but the wardrobe was connected to the company too?

As I looked around in complete bewilderment, a strange sensation coming from the window made me turn my head.

For the first time in a very long time, something began filtering in from the other side of that window, which until then had seemed simply painted black, with absolutely nothing behind it.

Moonlight.

As though hypnotized, I approached and yanked the curtains aside.

Beyond the glass stretched the world I knew.

The lights of apartment complexes in the distance, streetlights scattered along the roads, and the pale moon suspended in the night sky.

I opened the window with trembling hands.

A gust of night air, so cold it seemed to pierce my lungs, rushed into the room.

“No way…….”

I hurriedly ran to the entrance and flung the door open.

The company was no longer on the other side.

It was the hallway of the old apartment building.

Bags of recyclables someone had left outside.

The faint sound of a television filtering out from the neighboring apartment.

“Ha…… Hahaha, hahahaha.”

Finally.

I was home again.

My legs gave out, and I dropped heavily onto the threshold.

“Hahaha…….”

I remained there for a long while, breathing heavily on the cold hallway tiles.

Even though tomorrow morning I would have to open that wardrobe door again and return to that hellish office.

At least after work.

At least while I was at home and not at the company.

I could finally go to sleep again as just another member of that ordinary, miserable, completely normal world.