Got Dropped into a Ghost Story, Still Gotta Work-Chapter 136

Do You Know What It Feels Like to Die of Dried Blood?

The term refers to the agony of slowly burning out, physically and mentally, until the body gives out entirely.

That’s exactly what we’re experiencing right now.

The feeling of your blood running dry.

“...”

“...”

For three days.

Trapped in a ghost story, gripped by the terror of imminent death, waiting for a team that never arrives, unable to sleep or eat properly—this is what the human body goes through.

Do you know?

After three straight days without proper rest, a person starts to lose their ability to think rationally.

Taking turns sleeping an hour at a time in the second-floor food court doesn’t help much. The constant fear of death resets our nerves to high alert every single hour.

This is the perfect recipe for madness.

And it’s worse when your companion is a teenager experiencing their first ghost story.

“Hic! W-where are we going now...?”

“...It’s 56 minutes past. Time to move.”

The high school student I was tasked to rescue staggered to his feet, limping.

The mental strain he was under was clearly worse than mine. He was starting to stumble from dizziness more than his ankle, muttering nonsense into the air instead of crying or getting angry.

He didn’t even have the energy for tears or frustration anymore.

And no wonder—he’s barely eaten.

This damn mart offers almost no safe food options, and the few available are things a typical teenager wouldn’t even touch.

...Like rats or cockroaches.

Unmistakably not items considered part of the mart’s stock.

No one would eat those in the first three days unless they’re desperate.

Occasionally, I’d find something lost in the food court—abandoned by a shopper after checkout—but edible items were rare.

I’d only seen it happen once in three days.

I don’t think I’ve ever been happier to see a banana in my life.

But that’s also the only thing we’ve eaten in three days.

It was madness.

Fortunately—or maybe unfortunately—we hadn’t encountered other missing people on the second floor, so there was no competition for resources.

Which made sense. Most of the missing people were...

...on the upper floors.

“...”

But we were at our limit now.

The student I’m responsible for is out of stamina, both physically and mentally.

Even filling his stomach with water from the food court dispensers wasn’t enough anymore.

If this continued, in another two days, he’d be desperate enough to eat rats or cockroaches.

Though honestly, he might not even make it that far before something goes horribly wrong.

Right now, we were getting up every hour to move around, including bathroom breaks. But if one of us fell asleep or collapsed, throwing off that cycle...

That would be the end.

We’d run into an employee.

Maybe a worker “taking orders” in the food court or “cleaning” the bathrooms.

Escorted outside. Processed as missing.

That’s all that would remain of us—a single line in an exploration log.

The thought sent a sick, icy shiver down my spine.

“...”

Honestly, surviving for three days in such a precarious situation with an injured teenager was already lucky.

Not that I’m an idiot—I didn’t intentionally end up in this mess.

I didn’t think I’d go three whole days without meeting the Bronze Agent!

Yes.

My senior officer has vanished.

This is insane.

“...”

On the first day, I thought it was just bad timing.

Maybe they waited on the second floor while we hid under that display stand, then moved on.

If they weren’t injured like the student I’m escorting, they might have taken a more aggressive approach to prepare for escape.

So I decided, after some deliberation, to keep waiting on the second floor.

They’d have to return here eventually to rest.

To be honest, I didn’t have much of a choice.

Taking an injured teenager up and down floors would have been a death sentence.

Choosing to wait in the relatively safe second-floor food court seemed reasonable at the time.

But they never came.

So on the second day, I started searching other floors.

I couldn’t search for long. Leaving the injured teenager alone for even a few hours felt like leaving him to die.

But even when I pushed myself to the limit—venturing as far as the basement level—nothing changed.

The Bronze Agent was nowhere to be found.

At least, not within the range I could search within an hour.

Three days passed.

And during all that time...

The mart never resumed normal operations.

That’s one of the reasons escape is so desperately recommended before closing time.

This mart’s unpredictable schedule is what turns it into hell—a key factor lowering civilian survival rates.

The shortest confirmed downtime before the mart reopens is one day.

The longest is twenty days.

There’s no telling when the store will reopen.

That’s right.

The new “day” at Lucky Mart could begin at any time—or never.

Sometimes it resumes operations after just one day. But other times, hundreds of hours pass without the clock advancing a single minute.

That’s why some speculate that time in Lucky Mart diverges from reality—like it’s frozen in the past.

It doesn’t matter whether that theory holds up or not.

What matters is the current reality.

We’ve been stuck here for three days.

I’m beginning to fear what thoughts might be running through the student’s mind.

“I-it’s just, we came here looking for someone. A kid from our apartment.”

His disoriented mumbling broke the silence.

“...You came looking for them?”

“Y-yeah. They DM’d us, saying they were heading to Lucky Mart. Then they went missing. So we were joking about how it was a ghost story and decided to find them...”

Good grief.

“But it was stupid. They’re probably already dead... W-what if they got blended...?”

“...Don’t let your mind wander too far.”

I patted his shoulder.

“First of all, you’re getting out of here today.”

“...What?”

I had a hunch.

I recalled the record that seemed to match the Bronze Agent’s situation.

The agent went missing for three days due to unforeseen circumstances.

Result: Rescue failed. Agent returned alone.

If I reconstructed it logically...

Three days later, contact was reestablished.

The agent had escaped alone by that point.

Though they failed to rescue anyone, they likely tried to keep the civilians alive before leaving.

So statistically, the mart is likely to reopen today.

“Y-you’re saying...”

“Yeah. Just hold on a bit longer.”

Feeling a glimmer ❀ Nоvеlігht ❀ (Don’t copy, read here) of hope, I calmly glanced at my watch.

[09:59]

My heart raced.

In just a moment, the time would change...

[10:00]

The hour struck.

Silence.

“...?”

I waited a little longer.

But nothing happened.

No store jingle, no announcements, no flickering lights.

The entrance doors stayed shut.

“...”

The mart still hadn’t reopened.

Shit.

I blinked.

A dull, cold wave of shock rippled through my sleep-deprived brain.

“I-is it over?”

“...”

“Ah, ahhh...”

“It’s fine. There are other ways...”

I turned my head.

The student was fumbling with something.

A receipt.

The supernatural Bureau’s advisory note, disguised as a receipt. Likely the same one he’d found the emergency contact number on.

Why is he...

Was he looking for additional guidance?

But instead of reading the note, the student peeled something off of it and brought it toward his mouth—

“...!!”

I slapped his hand away.

“Ack!”

I forced his hand open and grabbed the object. He resisted, but I ignored him.

“D-don’t...!”

...A white, capsule-shaped pill.

This.

I recognized it.

It was once included by the Bureau alongside guides for high-grade ghost stories.

Euthanasia drugs.

If the Pain Becomes Too Much, Take the Capsule.

We guarantee a peaceful end.

The ominous feeling I had was right.

Damn it. Damn it, damn it!

The advisory note he’d read must have included the capsule.

“I-I’m sorry,” the high school student stammered through tears.

“I just... I can’t do this anymore. I don’t want to end up in that blender. I’m so scared, so dizzy... I just want to die peacefully...”

I felt like I couldn’t breathe.

“I’m sorry. Is it selfish of me to want that? Maybe if I just take half, we could share it...”

“No.”

I gritted my teeth and forced myself to smile as I patted his arm reassuringly.

“It’s okay. There’s another way out.”

“How?! We’ve been stuck here for three days without sleeping, eating, or doing anything—”

“We can do it.”

I gripped his shoulders firmly.

“Until now, I’ve been banking on the idea that the store would reopen soon. That’s why we’ve been holding out as safely as possible. But if the doors aren’t opening, there’s another way.”

“R-really?”

“Yes.”

It was the truth.

...As long as I made a certain decision.

Abandon the Bronze Agent.

The worry that they’d keep searching for us instead of escaping.

The pressure to confirm each other’s survival.

The hope of receiving help from them.

I had to let it all go.

After all, the record said the Bronze Agent escaped on their own.

...Though the rescue attempt had failed.

The idea that they’d keep looking after civilians who’d followed them? A delusion.

I needed to get a grip.

I resolved to do my best with what I could control.

If the two of us need to hold out until the store reopens...

Priorities quickly shifted in my head.

Having thought about it for three days, the next plan came easily.

“We’re going upstairs.”

“What?”

“Don’t swallow this. Just hold it in your mouth.”

I handed the student a Nostalgia Candy.

The strange item would return someone to their best physical and mental condition while they consumed it.

“W-wow...!”

The moment he put the candy in his mouth, his eyes lit up.

“My ankle doesn’t hurt anymore!”

“Think of it like slowly melting in your mouth. It only works while you’re eating it.”

“Okay...!”

The student stood up, his face brighter and clearer than I’d seen it in days. It was as if even his mental state had returned to its peak.

I braced myself for him to start asking why I hadn’t given it to him sooner. But he seemed too amazed by its effects to question it.

“So, the third floor is the top, right? Is there a way out there? Are we escaping now?”

“We’re going to prepare for escape.”

And...

“The third floor isn’t the top.”

“...What?”

“Sometimes, a door appears that leads higher than the third floor.”

But—

“The advisory note said not to go there...”

He was right.

Lucky Mart is a three-story building, from the basement to the third floor.

Do not believe in the emergency exit leading to the fourth floor.

The fourth floor is not part of the mart.

The fourth floor of Lucky Mart.

It had become a meme in the Darkness Exploration Records.

Ascends to the fourth floor.

That single sentence would mark the end of every record.

It didn’t matter how gripping the exploration had been before that. Once someone stepped through the door, they vanished.

That was what made it terrifying.

No one had ever described what happened on the fourth floor or why people disappeared.

Even the most detailed accounts of the process would always stop short of explaining the cause.

I recalled one particular case where an agent realized their rescue targets had all died.

Recording Start

Agent Choi:

“So, I’m on the third floor, and I’ve found the door to the fourth floor.”

“I’m just going to take a quick look inside. Don’t worry, I haven’t lost my mind. We can’t just leave the fourth floor unchecked. There are nearly a hundred documented cases of people disappearing there, right?”

(Agent Choi mutters personal justifications and last words.)

Agent Choi:

“Okay, I’m opening the door now. Ta-da!”

(Sounds of the door opening, footsteps, and the door closing in succession.)

Agent Choi:

“It’s ordinary. Just an old emergency exit. Stairs, nothing unusual. Even the exit door looks fine.”

(Several minutes of observation with no anomalies reported.)

Agent Choi:

“All right, I’m heading up.”

(Echoing footsteps suggest the agent is climbing stairs.)

Agent Choi:

“Let’s see... the exit door still looks normal. Oh... it’s gone. Guess I have no choice but to keep going up. Here I go!”

(Thirty seconds of climbing sounds.)

Agent Choi:

“Phew... I’m at the door to the fourth floor.”

Agent Choi:

“It looks just like a normal steel door. Nothing special about it.”

Agent Choi:

“Well, let’s open it.”

(Sound of the door opening. The Lucky Mart jingle begins to play.)

Agent Choi:

“Huh?”

(The jingle grows louder, distorting into a warped version of itself.)

Agent Choi:

“W-wait.”

(Indescribable cacophony of noises: screams, roaring winds, balloons rubbing, popping sounds, rain, and unidentified auditory distortions.)

(Silence.)

Agent Choi:

“Welcome to Lucky Mart!”

(Recording ends with no further activity for 24 hours before the device’s battery dies.)

The recorder was later found in the third-floor electronics section.

That was enough to convince anyone not to open the emergency exit to the fourth floor.

But...

“It’s fine. Once we find the door, I’ll tell you what to do.”

That’s our destination.

“...Okay.”

Maybe it was the trust we’d built over three days, or the confidence inspired by the Nostalgia Candy, but the student nodded without hesitation.

“Let’s move quietly.”

We left the second-floor food court.

Silently, we climbed the stopped escalator, avoiding the maintenance schedule for that section. Shoes off, we carefully crept upward in bare feet to minimize noise and avoid catching the employees’ attention.

Conversation stopped as we climbed.

Sweat dripped down our backs as we moved cautiously, one step at a time.

When we finally reached the third floor...

“Ah...”

It was strange.

The third floor of Lucky Mart had once been used for special event displays, with rotating themes and discounts.

But now...

“What... is this?”

The displays repeated endlessly.

The mart below had faithfully recreated the past. But here, the space stretched infinitely, grotesquely.

The third floor’s event displays span 3,611 sections, covering 232 square kilometers. Always confirm your starting point. If you get lost, you will never find the escalator to lower floors.

It was a massive maze, like stepping into a deranged artist’s sketchbook or a nightmare. The endless displays and special items were enough to drive anyone mad.

At the same time, the vast space provided plenty of places to hide or evade employees.

Rumor had it that some sections went months without any employee appearances.

It’s also good for stealing supplies.

...If you were prepared to give up on escaping.

No doubt the countless missing people were scattered somewhere in this space.

Maybe even the Bronze Agent.

“...”

“...”

“Stick to the wall. Let me know immediately if you see an emergency exit.”

“Yes...!”

We moved slowly along the escalator’s rear wall, entering the endless maze of displays.

In the dimly lit mart, where only emergency lights glowed, corner after corner revealed the same repeating layout.

[Camping Gear Clearance]

[Winter Outlet Sale]

[Housewarming Gift Event]

[Sell Your Flesh to Lucky Mart]

[Spring Kitchenware Mega Discounts]

Eventually, the signs began to take on bizarre wording. Every time I saw one, I turned back and retraced our steps.

We’d been crossing sections for several minutes, constantly checking the location of the escalator.

Then, a faint sound reached us.

From somewhere beyond the shelves, a dull thud echoed.

...

I quickened my pace.

The sound grew more distinct, and finally—

Hey? Is someone there?

“Huh?”

The student’s head shot up.

Who’s there? Do you need help?

A voice called out in the distance.

“There’s... someone...”

“Shh.”

I pulled the student down and whispered a warning.

“It might not be a person.”

“...!”

“And even if it is... do you think they’d still be sane after being here this long?”

“...!!”

They wouldn’t be.

The odds of someone retaining their sanity were next to zero.

Especially if they were speaking in such a friendly tone.

That’s dangerous.

I’d be more scared if it was a person.

Hey! You’re a person, right? Let me help you.

We ran, sticking to the wall.

The voice kept calling out, promising help.

If you don’t respond, employees will follow my voice. I know how to get out. Let me help you.

Sweat dripped from the back of the student’s neck. I kept moving, judging the distance between us and the voice.

Hurry! You don’t want the employees to see you, do you?

Shit.

For a moment, I considered taking them down. But what if they really weren’t human? Or if subduing them drew the employees over?

No. If it’s a person, it’s better to let the employees deal with them.

We had to keep moving.

Then, I looked up and saw it.

Ahead of us, something appeared at the end of the wall.

This 𝓬ontent is taken from freeweɓnovel.cѳm.

A steel door.

An emergency exit with a glowing green light.

And a sign.

[3F ↗ 4F]

“There...!”

There it was.

The emergency exit to the fourth floor.

I ran to the door and grabbed the handle.

Then I turned to the student and gave them the most important instruction.

“Don’t go up the stairs.”

“Huh?”

“When we go in, stand still at the landing. Don’t move, no matter what. Got it?”

The student nodded with wide, frightened eyes.

Good.

That was my theory.

Agent Choi:

“It’s ordinary. Just an old emergency exit. Stairs, nothing unusual. Even the exit door looks fine.”

But as soon as they climbed the stairs, the exit door vanished.

If my theory was correct...

As long as you don’t climb the stairs, the third-floor door won’t disappear.

Because we wouldn’t technically be leaving the third floor.

If this worked, the landing would be the safest space available.

There’s no record of employees going up to the fourth floor.

After all, it wasn’t part of the mart.

The emergency exit would become a safe zone that only humans could enter.

That would make everything easier.

Even the food I’ve hidden in my tattoos could be eaten there.

Because once we stepped inside, it wouldn’t be part of the mart anymore.

We could use the landing to check outside every hour at 10 a.m. to see if the mart had reopened.

This is the safest bet.

If I wanted to get an injured student out alive, this was the best option. Unless we somehow got unlimited Nostalgia Candy.

Even though the stories of the fourth floor haunted me, I had to try.

I gritted my teeth and opened the door.

Creak.

The sound matched the description from the records. Beyond it lay an old stairwell.

“Let’s go in. Be careful.”

“Y-yeah...!”

We stepped inside together.

To prevent any disasters, I wedged a piece of torn notebook paper into the doorframe, leaving the door slightly ajar but not visibly so from the outside.

Phew.

That should stop the voice from following us.

Then, as I exhaled, the student tugged on my arm with a panicked voice.

“A-Agent Grape...!”

He pointed up.

“Look...!”

At the stairs.

I followed his gaze, a chill running down my spine.

Someone was standing on the fourth-floor staircase.

A pale woman with sunken eyes and short hair.

“...It’s... a person!”

Go Yeong-eun.

My fellow rookie, a former medical student.

“...”

...What?

I couldn’t comprehend the situation. My brain struggled to make sense of what I was seeing.

Then I noticed her clothing.

A steel badge gleaming on her collar.

The official identification of an agent of the Supernatural Disaster Management Bureau.

Ah.

A memory resurfaced in my mind.

"Two agents who previously entered this supernatural disaster are reported to be in short-term missing status."

The Bronze Agent’s earlier mention of the missing agents.

...!

One of them was my fellow rookie, Go Yeong-eun, who had infiltrated the Bureau alongside me.