Chapter 1

Midnight Amusement Park

Ever since I was very young, I could see strange things other people couldn’t.

When I looked up at the ceiling before falling asleep, things resembling human faces or animal-shaped shadows would dart past overhead. Back then I was too young to realize that wasn’t normal.

The first time I began to think something might actually be wrong with me was after I entered elementary school. During class, I would see people walking outside the classroom windows. There were middle-aged women, old men, children around my age.

What was strange about people walking outside the window, you ask?

At our school, first years used classrooms on the first floor, and the higher your grade, the higher the floor you used. So when I was in first grade, I just assumed they were ordinary passersby. But even after I moved to a second-floor classroom in second grade, and then a third-floor classroom in third grade, people still kept walking past the windows.

As if they were strolling right outside them.

That was when I realized it.

They weren’t people.

I saw strange things all the time after that, but I never told anyone around me. If I said anything, people would obviously call me a liar and point fingers at me. And besides, I hoped that if I ignored whatever I saw and pretended not to notice it, eventually it would stop appearing altogether.

But contrary to that hope, my condition only grew worse. By the time I entered high school, I could no longer ignore them.

Before, they had merely appeared.

Now they were coming to find me.

And speaking to me.

Every single one of them looked horrifying. Some had blood pouring endlessly from their heads. Others had half-rotted faces. A few looked relatively normal, but even they stared at me with blood-red eyes, which wasn’t exactly any better.

Whenever they looked at me, it felt as though they were trying to say something. But every time they opened their mouths, instead of human speech, strange noises poured out. I couldn’t understand a thing they said.

Sometimes it sounded like piercing tinnitus.

Sometimes like the crackling static of a radio tuned to the wrong frequency.

Back then, I was truly miserable.

Every night, I desperately prayed for them to stop appearing.

Whenever I finally passed out from exhaustion and fell asleep, I often had the same dream.

An old woman dressed in white mourning clothes would appear, her silver hair neatly twisted up and pinned with a jade hairpin. I had never seen her before, yet somehow she felt familiar. Comforting. So I would complain to her.

I’m struggling. I’m really struggling.

Then the old woman would stroke my head as though she already understood everything.

Her hands were warm.

On nights when she appeared in my dreams, I slept deeply and peacefully, so I found myself waiting for her to come again.

That was how I lived until eventually I became a first-year high school student.

One morning, I woke up and realized the world was unbelievably quiet.

For the first time, I couldn’t see or hear any of them.

No ringing.

No static.

No bleeding figures.

Nothing.

Even after arriving at school with my bag slung over my shoulder, I still wasn’t fully convinced.

No way. It’ll probably all come back soon.

But even after the final class ended, I still couldn’t see anything strange.

For the first time, I felt hope.

Maybe I’d finally recovered.

Maybe I could live like a normal person.

It was the middle of monsoon season. Rain had been falling steadily since morning, and by afternoon it had grown heavier. By the time supplementary classes began, the sky outside had turned pitch black.

Rain pounded against the windows.

Thunder roared.

My classmates were all worrying about how they’d get home, but I was so happy simply because those things were gone that I sat there practically thrilled on my own.

Then, in the middle of class, the lights suddenly went out.

The classroom plunged into complete darkness, and everyone began murmuring anxiously. Our teacher tried reassuring us, saying not to panic, that it was probably just a power outage, before leaving for the security office.

At that moment, lightning flashed.

The classroom lit up for a split second.

Someone screamed so loudly it felt like my ears tore open.

It was our class president.

When the others asked what was wrong, the class president pointed at me with trembling fingers.

“Hey… don’t you see that?”

Thunder crashed violently overhead.

In the darkness, I could feel dozens of eyes silently turning toward me. The classroom became so quiet you could hear a pin drop.

Then lightning struck again.

For an instant, the room brightened as though someone had turned on a camera flash.

And every single classmate staring at me screamed.

The classroom descended into complete chaos. Everyone cried, shouted, and rushed outside in panic.

I had no idea what was happening.

I grabbed the deskmate beside me, who looked utterly horrified, and asked what everyone was freaking out about.

Then, trembling violently, he answered:

“There’s an old woman in white standing behind you… can’t you see her?”

He said the old woman was covering my eyes with her hands while glaring at the entire class.

Everyone had seen her during the lightning flashes.

Only then did I realize it.

Ah.

So that’s why I hadn’t seen anything all day.

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“And that concludes the ghost story from Hexatonic’s Dan Mugyeong, which became one of this summer’s hottest topics. Still terrifying even hearing it again.”

The pink-haired YouTuber, Maeari, smoothly delivered her hosting line.

“That must’ve been horrifying. Your classmates all saw the same ghost together.”

“Right. There were thirty-five students in the class, and around half of them said they saw the exact same thing.”

“It’s extremely rare for that many people to witness the same paranormal phenomenon simultaneously.”

Today, Mugyeong was appearing on the recorded broadcast of Silent Echo, the channel of mystery YouTuber Maeari, who had over 900,000 subscribers.

Yet the atmosphere inside the studio was strangely calm for a ghost-story broadcast.

Which made sense.

This ghost story had already circulated through social media algorithms countless times over the past month. If stories had lifespans, this one was on the verge of death.

At this rate, his segment was going to get edited out entirely.

Mugyeong was starting to grow anxious.

The other guests didn’t seem particularly interested either.

Besides Mugyeong, there were two additional guests today. One was a beauty YouTuber who frequently claimed to experience paranormal events. Glitter resembling fish scales shimmered beneath her eyes as she raised her brows in interest or let out small gasps.

But her reactions were obviously just for show.

In a polite yet lifeless voice, she asked,

“What did the ghost look like?”

“According to my friends, she was a white-haired grandmother wearing mourning clothes. She had very sharp eyes and a black mole on her chin about the size of a fingernail.”

“Oh my god, wait… wasn’t she the grandmother from your dreams?”

“Right. She was exactly the same woman from my dreams. Later, when I visited my maternal relatives and looked through old photo albums, I found out she was actually my great-grandmother. She passed away before I was born, but apparently she’d been a very powerful shaman.”

As Mugyeong answered, he glanced sideways at the man seated next to him.

Another male guest sat there.

A male shaman named Cheongun.

He was a tall, cold-looking man with strikingly handsome features. His high nose bridge and pronounced brow bone gave him an exotic, refined appearance like a model, while the line of his neck extending above the collar of his white silk shirt looked long and elegant.

Unfortunately, Cheongun’s current expression was awful.

An hour had passed since filming began, yet aside from greeting everyone at the start, he hadn’t spoken a single word.

As a result, the already lifeless atmosphere on set had only sunk further.

Seriously, handsome bastards always get away with acting expensive. What an asshole. Then again, he’s better-looking than me, so even if he says nothing, they’ll probably keep cutting to random close-up shots of his face. Meanwhile the conversation’s dying and I’m the only one who’ll get completely edited out. Honestly, is this guy even a real shaman? Feels more like some influencer pretending to be one. Doesn’t look spiritually gifted at all.

Internally, Mugyeong cursed Cheongun nonstop.

“Why do you think your great-grandmother appeared specifically to you?”

“At the time, I was struggling so badly that every night I cried while praying for the ghosts to stop appearing before I fell asleep.”

At those words, Cheongun suddenly frowned as though displeased.

Mugyeong had no idea why, but it was the first genuine reaction the man had shown all day.

“So after that incident, you never saw ghosts or heard strange sounds again?”

“No. I can’t see or hear anything anymore. I think it might be thanks to my great-grandmother.”

The story was gradually reaching its conclusion. Like the experienced host she was, Maeari seemed ready to wrap things up naturally around this point.

Mugyeong grew anxious.

This was the first meaningful opportunity his failing small-company idol group had gotten in three years since debut.

Their fanbase was tiny. Their songs naturally never charted. They barely survived off university festivals and local events, but even those had dried up after a traffic accident during a regional event trip.

Just when he’d thought they might literally starve, this ghost story had finally given him a chance to attract attention.

And if he lost this opportunity, there probably wouldn’t be another one.

Mugyeong decided to follow his impulse.

The truth was, there was a hidden continuation to this ghost story.

Until now, he’d never shared it publicly out of respect for the original owner of the story.

But he was no longer in any position to worry about courtesy.

As though making up his mind, Mugyeong inhaled sharply and spoke.

“Actually… this is the first time I’m saying this on broadcast.”

This development wasn’t in the script.

Three pairs of eyes turned toward him at once.

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