STRGS 07

Chapter 7

Mangryang Tunnel No. 2 (2)

“Ah, how the hell are you driving? Seriously!!”

“Why are you stepping on the brakes inside a tunnel! Are you crazy?!”

Curses, protests, and the ringing of the chime.

“Driver, what’s going on?”

“Is there something up ahead?”

Stepping on the brakes inside a tunnel is a crazy thing to do.

It’s the kind of driving where you wouldn’t be able to complain even if someone grabbed you by the hair. Along with the complaints of the passengers, the driver call chime rang ding-dong, ding-dong.

“Hey!”

“Damn it, I’m wide awake now.”

“Was there an accident?!”

There was no answer at all. The interior lights of the bus flickered.

The passengers who had been protesting without exception seemed to notice the strange atmosphere as they gradually lowered their voices and began reading the room. A subtle chill hovered in the air.

“Please take your seat.”

Through the speaker, a voice close to a mechanical sound mixed with intense noise made a few broken static noises before repeating at an incredible speed.

“Please take your seat.”

“Please take your seat.”

“Please take your—”

“Isn’t the announcement system broken?”

“Driver, turn off the announcement! What happened?!”

Someone shouted, but there was no response. The announcement flowed continuously. Each time the broadcast repeated, the speed grew faster and faster, until finally, the sound of gasping breath began to mix in. Hee-hee-heek, heek, heek.

“Driver!!”

“I-Is he dead?”

Those words muttered by someone instantly weighed down the inside of the bus. No one dared to step forward. The suppressed breathing of the passengers and the announcement repeating the same words while gasping for breath.

‘It’s a ghost story.’

This was likely the tunnel ghost story displayed on the depth meter. Rather than the dopamine of being able to fill a new entry, practical worry came first.

‘And it’s with other people too…’

Until now, if things went wrong, it was just me alone… If you die in a ghost story, you probably die in reality too, right? If you’re lucky, at least your corpse remains, and if you’re unlucky, it’s a missing-person ending where they can’t even find your body. This wasn’t a matter to act rashly on.

“Hey, why are we stopping all of a sudden?! Are you going to take responsibility if I’m late?!”

‘Ah, no way.’

While I was working my brain, a middle-aged man sitting diagonally in front stood up abruptly from his seat and headed toward the front of the bus. The moment I stood up from my seat thinking I had to stop him—

“Eaaaaaargh!!”

A scream filled with horror and panic pierced through the bus and ran wild. The man stumbled backward and tumbled down the bus stairs. Almost simultaneously, the bus driver, who hadn’t budged an inch, finally stood up from his seat and stood in the aisle. To be exact, only a part of the bus driver stood in the aisle.

The driver’s head was melting away. Where his head should originally have been, a pitch-black hole was gouged deep.

Swallowing his eyes round and round, the hole was growing larger all the way down to his throat.

From where the mouth of the bus driver—with only his lower jaw remaining—should have been, an announcement sound like a recorded voice flowed out.

“We will check your tickets. Please take your seat.” “We will check your tickets. Please take your seat.”

Inside the bus where there was nowhere to run, even the sound of breathing was swallowed up.

It was an instinctive fear. A primal, powerful fear of death that the moment you move, make a sound, or even protest to that driver, your head might fly off.

The hole that swallowed the bus driver’s head wriggled as if alive, swallowing the driver whole upside-down—as if there were a black hole inside his body sucking him in.

His lower jaw vanished, and between his spine and ribs, organs could be seen throbbing. Muscles, blood vessels, flesh, and nerves unfolded one by one before being dragged inward.

‘Wow, what kind of ghost story is this really?’

Did something else mix into the tunnel ghost story? Briefly recalling the hands crawling in Blood Valley, I quickly opened my cell phone. Even in a no-signal state, my blog alone opened as usual. I had definitely entered a ghost story. Tapping 忘梁2 Tunnel into the search bar, a few ghost stories came up.

【True Story】 Does anyone know Mangryang Tunnel No. 2?

If you take the wrong national road while going to Iksan, there’s an old tunnel you slip into, and that’s Mangryang No. 2. Even if it shows on the map, people who know it are extremely rare. It’s a place where if you just pass through and get caught, you’re screwed.

During the Japanese colonial period, while digging the tunnel, they touched a seonang-dol (tutelary stone).

A tutelary stone is a guardian stone that’s protected villages since old times, but they just pulled it out. The village people’s warnings? Would something like that enter their eyes?

From then on, water filled up inside the tunnel, equipment broke down, and people died. Eventually, they pulled all the machinery out and dug it by human hands. Holding pickaxes, breaking rocks, praying, and building stone towers. What was made like that is the current Mangryang Tunnel No. 2.

RE)

It’s barely used now. After Mangryang No. 3 was built, it became a reserve road. Regular cars can barely enter, and it only gets passed if there’s an express bus frequency increase.

But they say there’s a strange mirror there.

It looks like a side mirror, but it’s said to be bent downward.

RE:RE)

└ Woah crap, I know that place. My older brother had an accident because of that mirror, f*ck. └─ It’s the one stuck on a pole shaped like a streetlamp around the middle of the tunnel with the mirror facing a super strange direction, right? My brother’s car broke down so he got out, and he had an accident there. └─└─ It was huge, so he still limps to the point he didn’t go to the military; but when he woke up and I asked him, he said a woman was hanging from that mirror, so he went to psychiatry for a long time.

【The Tunnel You Die If You Enter on a Green Light】

I did my military service near the Gangwon-do side a long time ago. Not GOP, but near the rear.

There’s a super old tunnel near there, and I’ll tell that story.

Looking at it, it’s just a narrow, outdated national road tunnel with a traffic light,

Simply put, green light = NO NO, red light = GO GO

My seniors enforced it super strictly, so at first I thought they were picking on me and went “Ah, can’t I just go?” bullsh*t like that. Telling them not to lie. Yeah yeah.

But the first day I asked, I got completely chewed out and felt like I was escaping this world on the parade ground. Sh*t, no one told me.

Later when I became a sergeant, I found out accidents really happen like crazy there. Especially the curve section inside the tunnel.

There are many accidents where they hit something in front, but quite a few people said a woman fell onto the bonnet. When it was at its peak, once a month there were tons of report calls asking what to do because they hit a woman in the tunnel.

But when you actually go, there’s nothing. Of course sh*t, because they didn’t hit a person…

When asked, 100 out of 100 said they went because it was a green light T_T This was a truly scary experience in my military life.

└ RE) I’m from a unit near there too, but it’s my first time hearing it, which batch are you? └─ RE: RE) Over 10 years ago. After the new tunnel opened and no one went, the reports vanished, so it was buried and forgotten.

‘Good, I think I know where to start deducting.’

No, but they said Mangryang Tunnel was on the way to Iksan. Why did it suddenly merge onto the road to Yeosan-si? Yeosan-si is a new city that has grown so large there’s talk of designating it a special city, with brand-new highways blasted open.

The most plausible deduction is that you don’t necessarily have to go to the closed Mangryang Tunnel; rather, once conditions are met, the ghost story is overlaid onto a space existing in reality. I don’t know about other ghost stories, but judging strictly by what’s facing me right now, that’s how it is.

I don’t know what color light we entered on, so I’ll have to find another way.

‘Even if my leg gets broken a bit, is finding the mirror to break open a pathway the fastest way?’

I scanned the outside out of the corner of my eye. Where is the mirror? Right? Left? What does it mean that it’s stuck strangely?

“…?!”

Just then, beyond the rear window of the bus, something like a flashlight beam began flickering frantically. The melted bus driver remained right in that spot. Even the people holding their breath with their mouths covered turned their eyes toward where the light shone with terrified expressions.

“D-Did they come to rescue us? It might be the police…” “Let us out, please let us out…” “Wait. What is that?”

It was neither the police, firefighters, nor tunnel management officials.

In the first place, ‘that’ was not a light. It was people. People running and screaming glowed faintly in the darkness before submerging, flickering grotesquely. Humans cannot emit light, yet their forms were vivid every time they flashed.

The people running frantically were all in horrific shapes. Blood-soaked faces, torn clothes, and the person in the very front was running with one shoe stripped off. The moment our eyes met, they waved their hands frantically and screamed.

“O-Open the door!!”

“Save me!!”

“W-What do we do?”

“Don’t we have to open the door?”

“Mister, open the door!”

“Are you crazy?! Are we in a position to help anyone right now?!”

The people sitting in the bus seats couldn’t bring themselves to pass the melted bus driver to go to the driver’s seat, and the middle-aged man who could reach the door handle thanks to rolling down the stairs showed no intention of opening the door.

“Open the door, f*ck!! Give me an answer!!”

Running while screaming desperately, the person in the very front lost his footing.

“Please…!”

The moment he raised his head, the upper half of his head vanished into the darkness. Sticky and soft things flowed down like long shadows.

Crunch.

The sound of bones cracking and flesh tearing. As if wallpaper were being ripped off from bottom to top, the man’s body was torn and pushed up into the darkness.

His shoulders vanished, and one arm dropped to the ground.

Things flowing from his torso poured out. One leg was chewed up. It broke.

Crunch.

Crunch-crunch-crunch-crunch.

Even covering one’s ears, the sound echoed clearly. Crunch-crunch.

It made a sound like chocolate breaking. It also sounded like soft meat crushing together with crispy flakes.

Ultimately, even the pool of blood scattered on the ground vanished into the darkness as if the dish had been licked clean.

One melted away like cotton candy in water with a gulp. Another had his feet caught and was dragged upside-down into the darkness. Every time the faint light flickered, the form collapsed, and arms, chest, jaw—everything mixed together and scattered on the ground.

And then, silence again.

In the quiet, clean tunnel, only the bus was left all alone. The flickering tunnel lights shone faintly.

“Just what on earth is…”

“Mom…”

A high school student sitting near the front began to sob. Driving me crazy. First, I counted the people inside the bus. One mister who rolled down in front, one student, three young kids who looked like a group of college students, and four people who looked like individual passengers. Including me, ten total.

“F*ck, explain what’s going on!”

No, why do unexpected variables keep popping up every time I try to think? Whether he had gone out of his mind from the insane situation or his anger overwhelmed even the ghost, the man who had rolled down the stairs screamed again and pushed the bus driver hard with his hand.

“Are you trying to kill all of us right now?!”

I stood up abruptly from my seat. I had to stop that. It wasn’t that I was a saint or had a sense of mission. It was just an intuition that I had to, along with a sense of disliking people dying that made me spring up.

“Mister. Calm down. Stimulating it for no reason right now won’t be good.”

“What are you! Are you in league with th-this thing too?!”

Would I be? A person paralyzed by fear simply doesn’t listen to reason anyway.

“No. I don’t know either. But it’s obvious that it’s better not to touch that thing. So step back a bit…”

“D-D-Don’t tell me what to do!!”

The moment the man pointed his finger at me, his hand touched the bus driver once more.

“Uh, eh?”

The man raised his arm. He had no hand. Below his elbow, the cross-section was clumped pitch-black, vanished as if he had no hand from the very beginning. And then, gulp.

“Ugh, eaaargh! Save me! W-What is this, pull it off me!!!”

As if swallowed like a black hole by the bus driver, the black cross-section attached to the man’s hand devoured him. His arm, his shoulder, his chest, his lungs were exposed before the screaming sound turned into the sound of a pneumothorax. With a swoosh, wheeze sound, his tongue stretched long, and his head was swallowed.

“Screeeeam!!”

Body parts that had dropped off at random flailed around trying to grab anyone. Directly across the aisle, the student in school uniform who had been sniffling let out a scream.

“It’s dangerous.”

Reclining the backrest as far as it would go, I grabbed the student and yanked her backward. The man’s fingers hovered in midair before dropping in a flurry. Rolling on the floor, the fingers were swallowed by the blackness and vanished.

“We will check your tickets. Please take your seat.”

The announcement flowed again from the bus driver who didn’t even have an upper body. Matching that, the light outside flickered once more.

‘…I’m f*cked. That thing,’

That ‘something’ hadn’t stopped. It was waiting. For a sound to be made. And right now, the only place here that could make a sound was this bus.

Remaining survivors: nine.

Bus status: stopped.