The first sensation was cold.
The temperature was low enough for the chill to seep through fabric.
It wasn’t as cold as a refrigerator. Instead, it had the chill of a stone building corridor that hadn’t seen sunlight in a long time. The cold seeping in through the ends of my hoodie sleeves slowly tightened around my wrists.
At the same time, the sound was dead to a strange degree.
There was definitely the sound of my sneaker soles pressing against the floor.
But it didn’t spread far. It didn’t feel like the footsteps were echoing, but being absorbed. The corridor itself was swallowing sound.
Next came the smell.
The smell of an archive where old paper and dust had damply rotted away. And beneath it, mixed in ever so faintly, was a smell like wet meat.
Before my eyes stretched a truly long corridor. There was no other way to describe it. Dense structures lined both sides.
Structures so tall they reached the ceiling, impossible to tell whether they were display cabinets or bookshelves. Pillars arranged at regular intervals. A faint yellowish light.
When I first saw it from a distance, it looked like an archive.
An old library corridor.
A structure where it felt like a librarian should quietly walk out at any moment.
A blue window briefly appeared at the edge of my vision.
[Beginning environmental scan]
[Beginning dimensional analysis]
Yukseo Hoerang (肉書回廊)-3721
Interpretation Name: Corridor of Books Made of Flesh
[Recording language patterns]
[High possibility of conceptual conflict]
I read the sentence and stopped for a moment.
Corridor of Books Made of Flesh.
The moment I properly confirmed the meaning of the name, the air of this place became even more unpleasant. I still hadn’t seen anything clearly, but I became certain that this world couldn’t possibly be good for humans.
I slowed my steps.
I saw the things placed on either side.
They looked like books.
Thick, old spines of different colors. Some looked like old hardcovers, and some looked like damp, swollen bundles of paper.
Some were dark red, some were yellowish, and some were excessively white.
But the closer I got, the stranger those spines became.
They were too organic.
The parts that should have been straight were subtly curved. There was texture on the surface. Not the grain of paper, but something like skin texture...
I took another step closer.
And stopped.
What had looked like book spines were spines.
“......Huh?”
My mind immediately refused to understand.
They were spines. A form where backbones had been neatly stood upright. Each and every vertebra had looked like the grooves of a book spine.
What had been wedged on either side like covers was not leather, but human skin. What had been spread thinly like paper and folded layer upon layer were not pages, but thinly sliced pieces of flesh.
Very thin, almost translucent flesh. Blood vessels showed through inside like threads.
Without realizing it, I stopped breathing.
My field of vision narrowed sharply.
I thought, no.
‘...No.’
There was no way.
But my eyes had already seen it.
The black patterns that had looked like letters were not ink. They were blood vessels, dried bloodstains, and the grain of tissue hardened dark red.
The yellowed, curled edges were not faded paper, but seemed like dried layers of fat.
Some of the books were rising and falling very slightly.
They were breathing.
I felt my esophagus shrivel.
Then something moved at the lower right.
I instinctively looked that way.
A large book was crawling across the floor.
To be precise, it was something shaped like a book.
Its cover wriggled like a damp eyelid, and teeth showed through a gap at the bottom. Very thin arms and legs were attached to both sides.
It wasn’t as fast as an ant, but it wasn’t slow either as it crawled along the corridor floor. As it passed, it left a thin, wet trail on the floor.
I froze where I stood.
That...wasn’t the only one.
Far off, there were others.
Some walked around in the shape of books. Some were standing like people, but their posture was strange. They were too stiff, and barely moved with their shoulders hunched forward.
Only much later did I understand why.
In the very center of that human-like thing’s torso, there was a deep vertical slit.
As if its waist had been folded, its upper body had opened apart, and the inside was filled not with organs but with layers of flesh neatly arranged like pages.
It was a person, but when opened, it was a book.
Without realizing it, I took a step back.
At that moment, a sentence formed clearly in my mind.
From the beginning, humans themselves were structured to be read. It wasn’t that what looked like books were people, but that this was a world that read people as books.
The moment that thought occurred to me, my entire spine went cold.
A sound came from far down the corridor.
Rustle......rustle...rustle.
It sounded like pages turning.
But it wasn’t regular.
It was too wet. It also sounded like fingernails peeling away damp flesh.
I slowly turned my head.
At the end of the corridor, beneath a very faint light.
Something was sitting against the wall.
A human figure.
At first, I thought a person was sitting there reading a book.
But that wasn’t it.
It was a gigantic book, and it was tearing in half and turning through a human that looked like a book.
The entire inside of the body was split into layers like bookmarks, and the gigantic book was turning them one by one with its right hand.
Every time it turned one, the red grain inside glistened. Between its finger joints came the sound of thin membranes snapping.
When I looked toward its face, the place where eyes should have been was densely packed with small title-like and letter-like black dots.
I retched on the spot.
“Urk.”
Nausea surged up.
At that moment, a blue window appeared sharply.
[Mental hazard warning!]
The current dimension induces strong rejection in the human cognitive structure.
[Symptoms]
Cognitive confusion
Nausea
Distortion of reality
Increased possibility of delayed judgment
[Correction]
Mental Protection Lv.1 in effect
[Immediate departure is advised]
The moment I read the sentences, strangely enough, my breathing returned by the slightest amount.
Mental Protection.
The passive skill that had been handed out like spam earlier.
Only after seeing the sentence that it was currently in effect did I realize it. That the reason I was still clinging to something resembling sanity after seeing this scene might be because of that.
Or maybe I was already going insane and just wanted to believe that.
I covered my mouth with one hand.
But in the midst of that, the sensation of the wall beneath my palm was strange.
Cold, and slightly squishy.
I instinctively felt around with my hand.
Beneath the smooth surface, there was something like an extremely faint pulse. It wasn’t a stone wall. It felt like living tissue thinly coated over.
The nausea grew worse.
“Fuuuck...!”
Almost reflexively, I pulled my hand away and staggered back.
At that moment, what I had been holding back collapsed.
“Fuck...fuck! Ah, uuurp...!”
Vomit poured out.
I bent my head and retched onto the floor.
As the smell mixed with stomach acid rose up, it mingled with the smell of the entire corridor and became even more horrifying.
The smell of wet paper, the smell of old blood, the smell of flesh, the smell of my vomit.
My senses tangled together until I couldn’t even tell what I was smelling anymore.
Even then, the corridor remained quiet.
Because it was quiet, it was even more terrifying.
No one screamed. No one was startled.
Things like books crawled or walked around, things like people were opened by books, and the corridor produced only the sound of pages turning.
This was not a fear that lunged at me and threatened me, but the kind of fear where the entire world calmly insisted that it had always been this way.
That made it even harder to endure.
[Warning intensified!]
Possibility of deepening cognitive contamination detected.
Prolonged exposure not recommended.
[Return immediately!]
This sentence looked almost like an order.
I didn’t even think to wipe my mouth. I only thought of returning.
‘Return...now...right now...’
As I drew up my will, a rift opened in the air, and through my vision blurred by tears, I shoved myself toward the dimensional gate.
The corridor began to fold.
The bookshelves on both sides bent inward and curled in. The spines closed all at once like book spines, the pieces of flesh overlapped like paper, and the figure at the end of the corridor tore apart like a solid line.
The rustling sound rushed into my ears all at once, and in the next moment, everything went out.
I slammed my knees onto the floor of my studio apartment.
“Cough, urk...!”
Vomit immediately surged up again.
I staggered into the bathroom and grabbed the sink.
Stomach acid poured out.
It was a different pain from the Glass Beach earlier. That had been a physical cut, but this was nausea that rose all the way from my stomach because my head had been turned inside out.
I turned on the water.
Swaaaah—
The sound of cold water striking the sink was so normal that it actually made me choke up.
For a long while, I only dry-heaved.
Tears and saliva mixed together and fell down my chin. The hand gripping the edge of the sink was trembling.
Even after the vomiting stopped, my body continued to remember the nausea.
It felt like it wasn’t my lungs, but my head that was throwing up.
“Hoo...hoo...”
I caught my breath and lifted my head.
My face in the mirror was a mess from around the eyes downward.
The thin cut on my cheek from earlier was still there, and tear tracks had spread over it. Since I had thrown up, my eyes were bloodshot red too.
I looked truly awful, but I was alive.
That was funny.
“Damn...”
My voice came out completely cracked.
The Dimension Archive did not answer.
It only quietly displayed records at the edge of my vision.
[Record updated]
Reality time: 2026-03-26 19:11:02
Dimensional entry
Yukseo Hoerang-3721
[Record updated]
Local status: Unknown
Location: Inside Yukseo Hoerang
Beginning environmental scan
[Record updated]
Local status: Unknown
Beginning dimensional analysis
Yukseo Hoerang (肉書回廊)-3721
Interpretation Name: Corridor of Books Made of Flesh
[Record updated]
Local status: Unknown
Cognitive structure rejection confirmed
Distortion of reality / Increased possibility of delayed judgment
[Record updated]
Local status: Unknown
Mental Protection Lv.1 in effect
[Record updated]
Local status: Unknown
Nausea / Vomiting occurred
Physiological rejection intensified
[Record updated]
Reality time: 2026-03-26 19:11:02
Returned to reality
Earth-0300
[Record updated]
Coordinates saved
Yukseo Hoerang-3721
Prolonged exposure not recommended
I read through the sentences and stopped at the last part.
‘Mental Protection Lv.1.’
“If not for that...”
The words caught in my throat and wouldn’t come out to the end.
Because it was far too easy to imagine what came next.
I turned on the faucet once more and rinsed my mouth.
Only after spitting several times did the sourness in my throat fade a little. Even so, my stomach continued to churn.
It still felt as if the sound of pages turning remained in my ears. When I closed my eyes, the scene of spines lined up like book spines came back again.
Now, the way I felt when looking at the dimensional gates had changed.
Until just a moment ago, even if I was scared, I still had a vague expectation that somewhere, there might be an okay world.
But not now. Now, every time I chose a dimension, I needed genuine resolve.
If the name was pretty, I was suspicious because it was pretty, and if the name was unpleasant, it looked even more dangerous because it was unpleasant.
I slowly came back into the room and sat on the edge of the bed.
The blue window was still floating vertically.
Beneath Yukseo Hoerang.
Atlantis-1334.
‘That son of a bitch...is it the Atlantis I know?’