“Click—”
Along with the tiresome sound of the mouse, the words [A new comment has been posted] appeared on the monitor.
“Shall we see how they react today?”
In the dark room, the only thing illuminating my face was the cold light pouring out from three monitors.
I sank deep into the back of my chair and gave a rotten smile.
My gaze was fixed on the nation’s largest mystery community, the “Ghost Story Creation Gallery.” Tonight’s sacrifice was already in my grasp.
Beside the comment input box, next to my fixed nickname written as my actual name, [Han Yujin], black text began to fill the screen.
——————
[Popular Post] ■■ Apartment Elevator Safety Rules.txt
Author: TrueHorror (112.158)
...
7. If a man in a black suit tries to get on at the 4th floor, never press the [Open] button. He is not a “guest.”
8. Before arriving at the 10th floor, make sure to check behind you through the emergency mirror in the corner of the elevator. If there is no one behind you, immediately press the button for the nearest floor and get off. The “something” that has realized you are alone will follow you out.
...
Comments (284)
ㅇㅇ(175.223): Wow, the writing is insane. It felt so real I got chills.
Concrete(fixed nick): This is even scarier because the layout is exactly like my apartment; I’m taking the stairs starting today.
Han Yujin: You call this crap rules? Guess the planner has no brain
ㄴ ㅇㅇ(211.36): Here comes this trolling bastard again.
ㄴ Han Yujin: Do you not see how rules 7 and 8 contradict each other? What are you supposed to do if the thing that got on at the 4th floor, the one that isn’t a “guest,” is standing behind you? If you follow rule 8, the structure makes you break rule 7, so who are you trying to fool with such a sloppy trap? Tells me everything I need to know about the author’s intelligence. This crap has 800 recs? This gallery’s level is seriously pathetic.
——————
The keyboard clattered nonstop.
The thought that the author would see my comment and get pissed off made the corners of my mouth rise on their own.
A reply was posted right away.
——————
ㄴ ㅇㅇ(211.36): Pathetic? Do you even know how many lives go into writing these rulebooks?
ㄴ Han Yujin: ? People risk their lives writing this crap? First time I’ve seen a lunatic say they put their life on the line to write. Stop getting so immersed;;;
ㄴ ㅇㅇ(211.36): Wow, fuck, you sure talk big for someone writing this while scratching your balls in your room
ㄴ Han Yujin: Then do you write inside ghost stories?
ㄴ ㅇㅇ(211.36): Yeah. It is a ghost story
ㄴ Han Yujin: LOLLLLLLLLL I’m out, thanks for the laugh. If you browse the gallery from inside a ghost story, does that make it a ghost story? LOL
ㄴ ㅇㅇ(211.36): Sigh. Why am I even talking to a hikikomori like this?
ㄴ Han Yujin: Yeah, the government officially announced there are no ghost stories, so next flat-earther, please~
ㄴ ㅇㅇ(211.36): I swear I’m praying you get pulled into a ghost story
ㄴ Han Yujin: I hope you get treatment for your mental illness
ㄴ ㅇㅇ(211.36): LOL let’s see if you can still say that after you’re invited to the Ghost Story Survivors Gallery
ㄴ Han Yujin: Mental illness is no longer something to be ashamed of. You can overcome it. (Seong Saintia Neuropsychiatric Hospital: 031-XXX-1832) (Yongin Neurostabilization Psychiatric Hospital: 031-XXX-0114) ...
ㄴ ㅇㅇ(211.36): Seriously, fucking please please please please get pulled into a ghost story, you son of a bitch, please please pleeeeease
——————
In 211.36’s comments, I could feel the rage smeared into every single consonant and vowel.
“Kehehe! Got pissed, didn’t you?”
Ghost stories exist?
Even a passing dog would laugh.
Thanks to the government’s official announcement, I didn’t need to bother responding seriously to that kind of idiotic logic.
Ten years in the Ghost Story Gallery.
For the past ten years, my joy in life had been logically demolishing every “rulebook” in the Ghost Story Gallery.
To me, ghost story rulebooks were not objects of fear, but nothing more than prey for nitpicking.
“Now, where’s the next sacrifice… Huh? What the hell. Why’d he delete his comments?”
Several of ㅇㅇ(211.36)’s comments had been deleted. I was sure it was the part where he’d been going on about the Ghost Story Survivors Gallery or whatever.
“Deleting and running? Pathetic.”
I chuckled and scrolled down.
Any new prey around?
Just as I clicked on a new rulebook—
Wooooong—
The monitor distorted with a bizarre sound. Every light in the room flickered at once.
“What the fuck…”
My vision went dark just as I was about to curse. A sensation of my body floating. The fishy smell of mold and a chilly cold wrapped around my entire body.
When I opened my eyes, I was no longer in my room.
A room with no visible end, its four walls covered in old yet ornate mirrors. At my feet lay a single piece of aged parchment.
“……Ha.”
A hollow laugh escaped me. It was the very cliché I’d seen hundreds of times on the gallery.
For some reason, the hand I used to pick up the parchment felt familiar.
——————
[Survival Rules for the Cursed Mirror Room]
1. Every mirror in this room reflects your past, present, or future self.
2. Even if the version of you reflected in the mirror differs from your current self, never be surprised or suspicious. That, too, is you.
3. One mirror reflects your “most ideal form.” Do not be captivated by that image.
4. Even if the being inside the mirror speaks to you, never answer.
5. If you hear the sound of a mirror breaking, hide immediately.
6. The only way to leave this room is to find the moment when every version of you reflected in every mirror becomes “perfectly identical.”
——————
“What a joke.”
I snorted.
Normally, I probably should have been scared.
But more than that fear, the anger I felt while looking at these rules was greater.
The rules were biting and tearing at one another, creating contradictions. Especially rule 6. That was the core of it.
‘All the mirrors have to reflect the same image for me to escape? According to rule 1, the mirrors reflect my past, present, and future, don’t they? How is teenage me, current me, and the old man I’ll be in the future supposed to look exactly the same at the same time?’
This was a malicious rule designed to be impossible to clear from the very beginning.
An ordinary person would get lost in the contradictions and self-destruct. But not me. I wasn’t one of those idiots who only admired rules. I was a troll who could break them.
This wasn’t a game made for following rules.
This was a board made for finding loopholes in the rules and “smashing” them.
I looked over the mirrors.
The present me with greasy hair, the past me in a school uniform, and… a beautiful girl with long white hair.
The “ideal woman” I had imagined all my life, yet somehow resembling me, stood in the third mirror as “another me.”
The puzzle pieces clicked together in my head.
The key strategy point of this ghost story was rule 6, the impossible mission to “make all the mirrors the same.”
Then the answer lay in “me” myself. If I couldn’t change the mirrors, then I just had to change the original source they reflected—in other words, “me.”
How?
By “breaking” the rules.
My gaze fixed on rule 2. “Do not be suspicious of the different version of yourself reflected in the mirror.”
This wasn’t an instruction. It was bait.
There would be a penalty if I broke it. But what would that penalty be? Normally, it would be death, but after setting up such a complicated board, there was no way they would give a simple instant-death penalty. If so… there was a high chance the penalty itself was the hidden system of this rule.
What if the penalty for breaking rule 2 and suspecting, “That isn’t me,” was to “synchronize” myself with that very “suspected being”?
— Tilt.
The cute girl in the mirror tilted her head.
Everything fit.
The moment I became the girl in that mirror, my “present” would change.
My “past” would become the girl’s past, and my “future” would also become the girl’s future. My very existence would be redefined. Once that happened, every mirror reflecting me would have no choice but to reset based on the changed me. All mirrors would come to reflect “the girl’s form.”
And thus, rule 6, “the moment when every mirror becomes perfectly identical,” would be fulfilled.
How ingenious. An act that triggered a penalty would become the clear condition itself. Reverse-engineering at its finest.
I might be crazy for thinking up something like this, but the planner who left such a loophole was even more pathetic.
“Good. Let’s go.”
I pointed my finger at the third mirror, at the beautiful girl, and spat out in a voice full of contempt.
“Hey. You’re not me, are you?”
The moment I said those words, the corners of the girl’s mouth in the mirror rose eerily.
[Rule Violation: No. 2. Do not be suspicious of a different version of yourself reflected in the mirror.]
Every mirror in the room emitted a red light all at once. A terrible ringing tore through my ears.
[Penalty granted: Permanent synchronization with the being you most “suspected.”]
“Just as expected.”
My body was engulfed in transparent light.
Feeling the emotion of victory, I burst into loud laughter.
Ahahaha. Ahahaha…….
“No. Wait.”
Come to think of it.
This wasn’t just some simple gallery post.
I existed here. That mirror existed here, too.
In other words, this was “reality.”
Then.
Then……
“I’m going to change?”
How?
Can a human’s sex change that easily?
And if it does change, what’s the process like?
Can I be sure it won’t hurt?
“Wait.”
Wait, wait, wait.
Where exactly have I fallen into right now?
What is this?
Why.
Why does a space like this exist in reality?
The realization that came crashing down too late was all blown away along with a scream.
“Uwaaaaaaaaaaagh!”
It was my scream.
A terrible pain of bones twisting and flesh being reconstructed.
How much time had passed?
When I came to my senses, I was collapsed on the floor. My entire body felt unfamiliar. When I struggled to raise myself and looked into the mirror, I drew in a breath.
Inside the mirror, the pro gallery addict was no longer there.
Standing there was a slender, pure-looking, white-haired beauty in her early 160 centimeters.
The very appearance I had denied just moments ago to clear the ghost story.
At the same time.
[ New survivor identified. Activating the gallery. ]
Along with a short voice echoing in my head, a translucent window unfolded before my eyes.
[ You have cleared “Building A, Unit 304: Cursed Mirror Room.” ]
[ Calculating strategy rank. ]
[ Gallery-wide Notice: The 1st-place ranking for Building A, Unit 304 has been updated. ]
— 1st Place. [Fixed Nickname Undecided] - Clear Time: 00:07:14 / Acquired Anomalous Form Crystal: A (Perfect)
My mind was in chaos.
Alarm windows whose meanings were hard to grasp constantly filled my vision.
An unfamiliar environment.
A sudden change in my body.
All sorts of notifications pouring in.
There was too much information for my brain to process.
It felt like being at a buffet and continuing to force food in even though I was already full.
“Uuugh…!”
Just as I thought I was about to collapse with a dry heave—
All the information disappeared, and only one message appeared before my eyes.
[ Welcome to the Ghost Story Survivors Gallery! ]