Incident Report During the Commute Chapter 4

Chapter 4

The signal never did catch.

Manager Kim lowered his arm, which he had been holding up high, as if reluctantly, and asked in a low voice.

“...If it’s enough to cut off communications in Gangnam, doesn't that an they’ve already crossed the 38th parallel?”

“If it's true, should we really just stay in this conference room? We should head to a shelter or sothing...”

In my flustered state, all sorts of thoughts raced through my head.

If a war really broke out, shouldn't I be heading out for the reserve forces?

Where should I go?

At that mont, the office, which had been noisy with everyone venting their concerns about war, suddenly grew quiet.

Puzzled, I looked up at the people.

Everyone, deathly pale, was staring at the conference room door with expressions of shock.

Deputy Head Jeong muttered with a dazed look.

“Assistant Manager Seong...”

I also slowly turned my head to look where everyone else was staring.

I saw the top of a head rising slightly above the film pasted on the door.

From the nose down, it was hidden by the film, leaving only a silhouette, but the bloodshot whites and cloudy pupils glaring at us were clearly visible through the transparent glass.

The face, half-hidden by the film, was familiar.

“...!!”

I barely managed to swallow the scream that rose naturally.

The person standing outside the door was the very assistant manager who had been lying there bleeding, his neck bitten.

“Aaaaagh!”

Behind , a loud clatter echoed along with a scream.

I looked back to see Gu Hyeon-woo, face pale, slumped on the floor.

A knocked-over chair lay next to him.

Kang Ye-ra muttered while staring at the person beyond the door with a bewildered expression.

“Clearly... Assistant Manager Seong was clearly dead... Hyeon-woo-nim and I saw it together!”

Kang Ye-ra, who finished her sentence as if shouting, looked at Gu Hyeon-woo as if seeking agreent.

However, Gu Hyeon-woo didn't seem to be in his right mind to answer her.

He couldn't even pick himself up and was just trembling while staring at Assistant Manager Seong.

Manager Kim, seeing the two of them in a daze, clicked his tongue and approached the door.

“You guys ran away without even checking properly, didn't you? He must have just been injured!”

Deputy Head Jeong looked uneasy but followed Manager Kim toward the door.

It seed she also thought they couldn't just leave a person outside like that.

“Um...”

I blocked the two people walking toward the door.

Since it was a mory I could hardly believe myself, my next words ca out in a slightly hesitant tone.

“I also saw the Assistant Manager on my way in.”

The grueso image of Assistant Manager Seong lying on the desk ca to mind.

I gulped and raised my hand to point to the front of my neck.

“Assistant Manager Seong... all the flesh on this side was gone, as if it had been bitten off.”

At my words, Kang Ye-ra and Gu Hyeon-woo made pained expressions, as if recalling the mory of that mont.

Manager Kim and Deputy Head Jeong looked at with eyes that were half-shocked and half-suspicious.

“I don't have dical knowledge, but... can a person still be alive after their flesh is torn away to the point where the neck bone is exposed? There was blood everywhere around him, too...”

Manager Kim replied in an uncertain voice.

“Well, it would be difficult, but... human life is quite tenacious, isn't it? Besides, he's standing right there now.”

I eventually brought up the story of the man I encountered in the restroom.

It was a story that felt so much like a lie even to that I hesitated a great deal before speaking.

But if Assistant Manager Seong was truly in the sa situation as that man, I wanted to stop them from opening the door at all costs.

At my words that the man had chased even after his ribs had broken and protruded after being caught in the door, Gu Hyeon-woo let out a strange sound—hik.

“Are you sure you didn't see sothing wrong? No matter what, how can a person run in that state?”

“I wish I had seen it wrong too, but...”

However, the sensation of sothing being crushed that I felt through my hands was still vivid.

As was the crack I heard then.

I shut my mouth with a dark expression.

A heavy silence hung over the conference room once again.

“W-we absolutely cannot let him in! Right now, I’m barely holding back from wanting to kick this bastard out too!”

A terror-stricken Gu Hyeon-woo shouted while pointing his finger at .

Manager Kim didn’t even spare a glance at the panicked Gu Hyeon-woo.

However, after hearing my story, the thought of opening the door imdiately seed to have vanished for him as well.

Assistant Manager Seong was still glaring at us from beyond the glass.

Beside his face, which was pressed tightly against the glass, his palms—thud, thud—aninglessly tapped against the door.

Perhaps because we were still visible through the glass, Assistant Manager Seong did not leave for elsewhere.

His forehead continued to—thump, thump—lightly strike the glass, and the hands pounding on the glass grew increasingly violent.

Even without the testimony of myself, Kang Ye-ra, and Gu Hyeon-woo, it was a sight that could never be seen as normal.

Still, he couldn't simply ignore soone he knew; after contemplating for a long ti, Manager Kim finally sighed and spoke.

“Then let's do this. I’ll go up and check properly to see how Assistant Manager Seong is. If it’s certain that he’s really dead, like the interns said, then we won't let him in.”

“...What exactly does that look like?”

Deputy Head Jeong asked, looking at Manager Kim with an uneasy expression.

But there was no way Manager Kim had a clear answer.

He simply shrugged his shoulders once, then stepped on a chair and climbed onto the conference room table.

Manager Kim straightened his body and looked down at Assistant Manager Seong through the transparent glass above where the film hadn't been applied.

In that instant, Assistant Manager Seong, who had been glaring at us, jerked his head up and looked at Manager Kim standing on the table.

Whether he couldn't control his body properly, Assistant Manager Seong’s upper body slamd into the glass wall at the sudden movent, leaving a red bloodstain.

In the corner of my eye, I saw Kang Ye-ra tightly clutching the hand of a startled Deputy Head Jeong.

Manager Kim, who had flinched back in surprise at Assistant Manager Seong's sudden action, craned his neck again to examine beyond the glass.

Then, his eyes widened, and he raised a hand to cover his mouth.

“Ugh...”

Manager Kim looked down at us and shook his head with a dark face.

His terror-stricken face was ashen.

Deputy Head Jeong leaned against Kang Ye-ra’s shoulder as if feeling dizzy.

Then, suddenly looking up toward the other side of the office, Manager Kim’s eyes went wide.

Pale as death, he hurriedly scrambled down from the table.

Manager Kim waved his hands urgently and shouted in a hushed voice.

“Hide, hide! Or find sothing to swing!”

“What's wrong?”

The mont I asked, startled by his sudden behavior,

Thud!

The sound of sothing hitting the glass was heard again.

It wasn't where Assistant Manager Seong was standing.

I turned my head toward the direction of the noise.

The man who had chased all the way to the office door was standing there.

The man's constantly moving, cloudy pupils trailed the five of us.

The man slamd his body against the glass again.

As the large man collided with all his strength, the glass partition wall shook precariously.

“I-Is this going to break?”

Gu Hyeon-woo asked in a trembling voice, standing pressed against the opposite wall of the conference room.

“It seems like they’re doing that because they can keep seeing us.”

I offered the hypothesis that had suddenly occurred to in a low voice.

The four of them turned their heads to look at .

I told them once more about what had happened in the restroom.

When I said the man seed to have forgotten about when I was hidden inside the stall, Gu Hyeon-woo urgently began moving around the conference room, looking for a place to hide.

“Do you think a secret door will appear if you look like that?”

Manager Kim snorted sarcastically.

Before long, Kang Ye-ra offered a plausible suggestion.

She pointed to the table in the center of the conference room and spoke calmly.

“How about we tip this on its side and hide behind it?”

While the conversation dragged on, two more human silhouettes appeared beyond the glass partition.

One was the short-haired man the four of them had seen before I arrived, and the other was an employee from another team whose na was still unknown.

As the number of people increased, the interval between the sounds of tapping on the glass shortened.

The repeated thump-thump sounds filled the conference room, fueling their anxiety.

We hunkered down behind the table, exchanging only glances without making a sound.

After a few minutes, the sound of tapping on the glass gradually grew quieter.

And only after a long, long ti had passed was the sound of those gathered in front of the conference room dragging their feet away heard.

“What do we do now? We can't stay here forever.”

Deputy Head Jeong asked in a hushed voice, but no one could offer a clear solution.

Ultimately, Deputy Head Jeong’s question sank into silence without receiving an answer from anyone.

Ti slipped away relentlessly.

As the sun slowly set, long shadows stretched across the conference room.

The lights in the conference room were still off.

However, since there was no one left to turn off the lights in the office, almost everything could be identified just by the light flowing in from beyond the glass.

My legs felt numb from hunkering down behind the table.

As I grimaced slightly and changed my posture, I heard a busy rustling sound from beside .

“Be quiet!”

Following Manager Kim's hushed scolding, Gu Hyeon-woo’s grumbling followed.

“It’s because my posture is so uncomfortable. Exactly how many hours have we been doing this?”

“Then why don't you just go out on your own, Hyeon-woo-nim?”

Kang Ye-ra whispered in a sharp voice.

Perhaps her legs were numb as well, as she was slightly stretching her legs and massaging her calves.

Deputy Head Jeong sighed and spoke.

“Hyeon-woo-ssi is right. Will staying hunkered down like this solve anything? I don't know how much longer we can hold out here.”

“...Still, this is the middle of Seoul; soone might co to save us.”

Manager Kim grumbled.

Kang Ye-ra, her expression darkly somber, replied quietly to his words.

“But it’s strange. There were quite a few people who fled the office when that person ca in earlier... Has no one reported it until now? Why is no one coming?”