“……Ngh.”
Consciousness surfaced alongside vicious nausea.
I tried to raise my body, but it was as heavy as a thousand catties.
No, it wasn’t heavy… it was light.
Far too light.
Overwhelmed by my own strength trying to get up, I rolled across the floor.
— Crash, bang!
My head hurt like hell.
“Ugh!”
I tried to curse, but what leaped out was a slender, high-pitched whimper.
“……?”
A sense of wrongness.
A sense of dissonance, as if all the nerves in my body had been rewired wrong.
Stumbling to my feet, I approached the old full-length mirror standing in the corner of the room.
And the moment I saw my reflection, my brain short-circuited.
A slender girl stood there, white hair like silk cascading down to her shoulders.
A small, pale face. Deer-like eyes opened wide, soaked in terror and confusion.
It was exactly the appearance I had suspected in that strange place just moments ago.
“Ah…… Aaah……”
Against my will, a slender hand reached toward the mirror.
The girl in the mirror stretched out her hand in exactly the same way.
The moment my finger touched the cold glass, I had no choice but to confront the fact that everything was real.
This was not a dream.
That penalty was real.
“……No way.”
Thud.
I sank down on the spot.
The fact that I had become a girl.
That was shocking, but not that much.
More than that, the “phenomenon” capable of turning me into a girl was the problem.
The fact that something capable of flipping a human’s gender in an instant actually existed meant one thing.
It meant ghost stories were real.
And if ghost stories were real……
“It means I lost!”
Because it meant I’d lost that flamewar against a floating user not long ago!
“Aaaaaaaaargh!”
This time, a proper scream came out.
Clutching my head, I shouted inwardly.
‘The gallery!’
Yes, the ghost story gallery first……
Suddenly, a translucent window floated before my eyes.
[Connecting to the ‘Ghost Story Survivor Gallery’.]
“No way.”
Have I actually gone crazy?
No matter how much I rubbed my eyes, the translucent window did not disappear.
[Please register a new fixed nickname.]
Ignoring the rising warning window, I swiped my finger through the air.
Like a madman, I swiped through the air and found the post for ‘The Room of the Cursed Mirror’.
My record, permanently etched in the number one ranking.
And below it, the comments of awe and admiration left by countless survivors.
Then, a small button at the upper right of the post caught my eye.
[View on External Feed (Ghost Story Creation Gallery)]
“……?”
I pressed the button thoughtlessly.
The screen switched to a familiar one.
The very ‘Ghost Story Creation Gallery’ where I had resided for ten years.
The exact same rules post was floating there.
And below it, the comment section.
[ㅇㅇ(175.223): Wow, the writing is insane. It felt so real it gave me chills.]
[Concrete (Fixed Nick): It’s even scarier because the layout is identical to my apartment complex;]
[Han Yujin: Bro’s here. You wrote this trash and called it rules?]
[ㅇㅇ(211.36): Here he comes again, you troll bastard.]
……
The ‘Ghost Story Creation Gallery’ was not a creative writing site.
It was a massive system that automatically uploaded the records steeped in the blood and lives of survivors from this ‘Ghost Story Survivor Gallery’, making them appear as mere ‘creative ghost stories’ to ordinary people in the outside world.
If so. If so…….
ㅇㅇ(211.36). “Do you even know how many lives went into writing these rules before you run your mouth?”
“ㅇㅇ It’s a real ghost story.”
That floating user bastard who had a flamewar with me.
He wasn’t a lunatic.
He was a real ‘survivor’.
A survivor who had trembled in the terror of death inside a ghost story, barely made it out alive, connected to the gallery, and left a single line comment.
And I. What had I said to him?
[Han Yujin: Mental illness is nothing to be ashamed of anymore. You can overcome it. (St. Cecilia Psychiatric Hospital……)]
“……Urk.”
My stomach churned.
Defeat. A complete and overwhelming sense of defeat that I had never once felt in ten years.
Just what had my ten years been?
Hadn’t all my actions—boasting about my logic, my analysis, digging into the loopholes of the rules—amounted to nothing more than throwing stones at people fighting for their lives from the safety of my room?
It was less a matter of morality and more a matter of reason.
The problem was my image, mocking them with a single line of ‘official government’ news.
The most perfect, rational, undefeated troll.
The pride in which I boasted of seeing through situations better than anyone else was shattered into pieces.
As a ‘troll’, I had been completely defeated by ㅇㅇ(211.36).
“I…… lost……?”
A defeated troll has no right to remain active in the ‘Ghost Story Creation Gallery’.
That had been my one and only creed during ten years of gallery browsing.
And now that this creed had crumbled, I was no longer ‘Han Yujin’.
I couldn’t bear the shame of it.
I deleted the Ghost Story Creation Gallery from my bookmarks.
…And from the address autocomplete as well.
◆
Meanwhile.
A bomb had dropped on the Ghost Story Survivor Gallery.
[Gallery-wide Announcement: The #1 ranking for Unit 304, Building A has been updated.]
The moment the announcement went up, countless posts began appearing.
Title: ?? Is the ranking update for Unit 304, Building A for real?
Author: Asphalt-Flavored Candy
Came here because of the notification just now, what the hell? Wasn’t that place in Building A a ghost story exclusively for veterans? Even OrthodoxTactics took 7 hours to get a B rank there.
Comments
[LivingForToday: 7 minutes 14 seconds. Is this a joke?]
[LogicCircuit: System maintenance? If not, there’s a possibility the Special Materials Department got involved.]
[CatEarsAreTruth: A newbie cleared it, meow! The nickname is ‘Fixed Nickname Pending,’ meow! A total beginner, meow!]
[Asphalt-Flavored Candy: A newbie cleared Building A? And in 7 minutes? Talk sense.]
[LivingForToday: The Aberration Crystal is A-grade too. Looks like an insane genius newbie just appeared.]
[LogicCircuit: Agreed. There’s a high chance the clear method was abnormal. It’s an impossible time without exploiting a fundamental loophole in the rules. I’m going to marathon-read the rules for ‘The Room of the Cursed Mirror’ from the start. I might have missed something.]
The gallery heated up instantly.
The fact that the ranking for an A-grade ghost story—the notoriously difficult ‘Room of the Cursed Mirror’—had been updated with an overwhelming time and reward was enough to capture the attention of every survivor.
The bait led to more bait, giving birth to new speculation.
Title: But what if that newbie is that bastard?
Author: ㅇㅇ(121.170)
You know that fixed nick ‘Han Yujin’ who always nitpicked every rules post on the Ghost Story Creation Gallery? He was crazy good at finding loopholes. What if he got kidnapped here?
Comments
[LivingForToday: Don’t even bring up that lunatic bastard. I blocked him ages ago.]
[CatEarsAreTruth: Ah~ that troll? I blocked him too, meow lol. It’s unpleasant to watch someone browse while lives are on the line, meow.]
[Asphalt-Flavored Candy: No way. A basement keyboard warrior suddenly comes in and clears an A-grade ghost story in 7 minutes? I’d rather believe a ghost did a good deed.]
[ㅇㅇ(121.170): No, but still, the possibility is……]
[LogicCircuit: That’s a severe logical leap. Online analysis ability and real-world survival ability are separate. An ordinary person can’t help panicking when pulled into a ghost story. It’s a psychological issue.]
The ‘Han Yujin Hypothesis’ instantly became a laughingstock and vanished.
Most of the veterans in the Ghost Story Survivor Gallery had already put Han Yujin—who constantly baited in the lower galleries—on their block lists long ago.
Now, the survivors’ focus converged on but one thing.
The newbie who had shattered an A-grade ghost story like a toy.
Just who was this newbie with such insane skills?
Everyone waited with bated breath.
But a day passed, three days passed, and eventually a whole week passed, yet no introduction post from ‘Fixed Nickname Pending’ appeared.
◆
And so a week passed.
I neither ate nor slept, simply staring blankly at the ceiling.
Quitting gallery browsing felt like quitting life itself.
It felt as though everything had ended.
Then, one night as I was slowly withering away.
Something sparkling in the corner of my vision caught my eye.
“……What’s this?”
Had my tears hardened or something?
I raised a hand weakly and touched the corner of my eye.
A small, cold sensation at my fingertips.
It felt like a finely crafted jewel.
A word I had seen in the Survivor Gallery suddenly came to mind.
What was it?
There was something about a crystal.
As if entranced, I opened the gallery window again.
[ Register your fixed nickname ]
Ignoring this.
[ Gallery-wide Announcement: The #1 ranking for Unit 304, Building A has been updated. ]
Clicking the notification, a post was immediately displayed.
[ Rules ] ‘Building A, Unit 304: The Room of the Cursed Mirror’
.
.
.
1st. [Fixed Nickname Pending] - Clear Time: 00:07:14 / Aberration Crystal: A (Perfect)
2nd. [OrthodoxTactics] - Clear Time: 07:48:11 / Aberration Crystal: B (Pure)
Ah. Right.
This.
Aberration Crystal.
I copied the word exactly and searched, and a brief explanation of the term came up.
—————
: A crystal obtainable upon clearing a ghost story.
After clearing a ghost story, if one sleeps, it forms beneath the eye like a tear within a day at the earliest, or a week at the latest.
Its grade is determined by its color and shape.
It is presumed that the grade is determined by the ghost story’s difficulty, the clearing method, creativity, and so on.
—————
“Oh.”
In short, it meant I had cleared this ghost story better than anyone else.
In a unique way that no one had thought of.
“Heh.”
Yes, I had lost on the ‘Ghost Story Creation Gallery’.
The reputation I had built as a troll over ten years had fallen to the ground.
But.
“That was…… the amateur league, wasn’t it?”
The corners of my mouth slowly curled upward before I knew it.
A new place to troll.
A place to prove my greatness.
The Ghost Story Survivor Gallery.
My pride, my life, my everything floated before my eyes in the form of a translucent window.
◆
The Ghost Story Survivor Gallery.
The newbie’s introduction post—which had tormented the veterans for an entire week—was finally registered.
Title: [Introduction] You guys couldn’t even clear this one thing and were struggling? Lololol
Author: ㅇㅇ
The veterans had a premonition.
That the days ahead would be even harder than the nerve-wracking week they had just endured.