A rookie agent had been infected.
“Agent?”
Ryu Jaekwan had already experienced similar situations multiple times.
An agent who miscounted the final step and stepped onto the wrong stair. An agent who endured two days without a drop of water, only to be contaminated by a raindrop falling into the membrane of their eye…
They just disappear.
Just like that.
Without context, without warning.
The kind of eeriness that some find entertaining is what people often call an ghost story…
But for the person involved, it was only natural for it to feel like a common tragedy.
“Bronze-ah.”
At that moment, his superior quickly bumped his shoulder and slung an arm around him.
“…!”
And with a finger on his back, he wrote one word.
So the infected rookie agent wouldn’t notice.
Calm.
“Grapes-ie! But hey, we should get going. Your hand’s about to disappear too, right?”
“Ah…”
The rookie agent, Kim Soleum, looked down at his right arm, which had been severed and vanished, and answered rather brightly.
“It’s fine! The Mermaid Princess said she’d give me a new one. I’ll be okay!”
“…Is that so?”
“Yes! Look over here, I even got this…”
Kim Soleum lifted a few items the children had given him and proudly showed them off.
In reality, they were all worn-out, shabby trinkets, glittering only in the eyes of the Twinkle Twinkle Ocean Palace. The kind of toys only young children, not full-grown adults, might like.
“…Right. Just a sec.”
The two of them let Kim Soleum continue playing with the kids and quickly stepped aside to speak in hushed urgency.
“I don’t know what the hell happened, but the infection’s already way too deep.”
Half his face was covered in tumors, and the infection core, manifesting as a ‘tail’, had grown far too large.
Normally, something like this wouldn’t happen after just three days.
Had he actually entered the ‘Ocean Palace’ and come back? Or maybe something went wrong when he came into contact with the kids? Or perhaps Kim Soleum himself simply had a body that was exceptionally vulnerable to biological disasters.
Either way, while rare, it wasn’t impossible for a rookie to experience such a thing. But with his mind already seeming contaminated, it was hard to confirm anything through him right now.
Or maybe…
“You don’t think that cat…”
“……”
…A more dangerous entity had intervened.
Maybe to push them along.
Ryu Jaekwan’s face turned pale, then snapped back to focus.
“The conch.”
It was the cure.
“We need to bring it. Right now!”
“Wait.”
Agent Choi grabbed his arm.
“That cat seemed to give the cure to save the children.”
“But Agent Grapes still looks like a child on the outside…”
“Listen to me. If that cat’s a high-risk phenomenon ranked higher than even the dokkaebi trick our Elder set up… it might not recognize that guy as a ‘child’ anymore.”
“…!”
Ryu Jaekwan nearly shouted, ‘So what, do we just give up?!’
But his superior, Agent Choi, was looking at ‘Agent Grapes’ with an unreadable expression.
“……”
Then, after calming his junior, he walked back over to Kim Soleum among the children.
“Grapes-ie.”
“Yes?”
“Then would it be okay if you just stayed here altogether?”
“Yes!”
Ryu Jaekwan couldn’t hold back and yanked the back of Choi’s collar.
“Sunbae!!”
“Hey, hey, I’m asking to check how far the infection’s gone. …It’s serious. It’s not just physical, it’s in his thinking, too…”
“……”
“Let’s get him out now.”
“Then…”
“No, I mean the way we always do.”
Agent Choi sighed and patted his junior’s back.
“Bronze-ah, Bronze-ah. Get it together. Our escape method isn’t based on infection levels. It’s based on the time of disappearance.”
“…!!”
That’s right.
According to the Disaster Management Bureau’s escape protocol, a child wouldn’t vanish into nothing if their disappearance had occurred within the last 1000 days.
And Agent Grapes had only been here for three days. He still met the criteria!
“All we have to do is convince him to leave. I’ll send him out, so just keep the kids from scattering, okay?”
Then he turned toward the infected Kim Soleum and called out in a cheerful voice.
“Let’s come back to the Ocean Palace next time, Grapes-ie! But how about we play balloon ride on the way? Just like when we came here earlier, floating up, nice and easy!”
It was one of the escape routes identified by the Disaster Management Bureau.
Do you remember?
Wasn’t it said that children’s books with a surprise appendix titled ‘How to Get to the Twinkle Twinkle Ocean Palace’ were often found scattered throughout the playrooms?
In truth, those books contained an additional passage.
At the very back of the books that had ‘How to Get to the Twinkle Twinkle Ocean Palace’ written in them, there were rare instances where a method for returning from the Ocean Palace was included.
That particular page was composed with advanced vocabulary and steps comparable to professional manuals, demanding a level of reading comprehension impossible for preschoolers.
All attempts to identify the required materials for the ‘returning from Twinkle Twinkle Ocean Palace’ ritual had ended in failure.
So, to actually use this escape method, the agents carried the necessary supplies with them directly.
Fortunately, because the entire preparation process was so irrational and obstructed, the escape method itself was narratively sound.
Up until this very moment.
“It’s not going up…”
“…!!”
This time was an exception.
Agent Choi, with a look like he might bite his tongue, almost gawked at Kim Soleum dangling from the balloon, but managed to keep a straight face.
Originally, a child tied to the ‘going home balloon’ would close their eyes and gently float into the sky, and when the balloon eventually popped, they would fall—
And be found rolling out from a slide.
That was how it was supposed to work…
But the balloon wasn’t rising at all.
This had never happened before.
That’s because no agent had ever been this deeply infected…!
Moreover, the degree of infection usually matched eerily well with the symptoms of a year of disappearance.
So, any child still within the viable window for escape always floated upward with the balloon.
But now, a new irregular had occurred.
– If the subject is severely contaminated, the balloon cannot rise into the sky, rendering the escape method useless.
Like a parasite gripping its host tightly, refusing to let go.
The tumor-tail, ulcerated and grown from Kim Soleum’s back, lay heavily grounded and squirming.
‘…Is he almost fully merged with the ulcer mass?’
Thinking about that bizarre collective entity resembling the Ocean Palace, Agent Choi’s brow twitched.
Yet his mouth spoke casually.
“Oops~ I must’ve under-inflated it! Let’s try a different way, okay?”
“Okay…”
And the moment Ryu Jaekwan, who had been with the children, saw the two returning empty-handed, he immediately sprang into action.
“Bronze-ah.”
“We need to get the cure right now. The prepa—”
“Bronze-ah.”
Agent Choi paused briefly, then spoke slowly…
“Did it ever occur to you that, if Grapes was in his right mind, he would’ve given up his spot to a child?”
Ryu Jaekwan’s hands froze.
“It did.”
“…!”
“That’s exactly why he should be prioritized. Most agents think like that. If you don’t prioritize them… they’ll give up their lives too easily.”
“……”
“Saving the agent means saving more lives.”