Godsent Top Star [EN]: Chapter 240

240. The Identity Beyond the Radio (2)

Radios these days hardly have any static.

There’s a slight crackling noise when receiving, but it’s very brief.

It’s not like we’re using something from the 1980s; there’s no way a modern radio would have such a long, crackling static when receiving.

The mechanical static, chilling to the bone, made everyone stop in their tracks.

“Oh, oh. It seems like the radio’s working now. I think it’s the director? I’ll try to contact him!”

Kim Si-hyuk quickly took out the radio, pressed the button, and eagerly called out to PD [Production Director] Gil.

“Director! Director, where are you?”

Everyone except Yeon-woo was hopeful.

They expected to hear back from PD Gil Sang-jun soon.

Chijijijijik-

“……Is the communication state strange? Did it really break when he fell somewhere?”

Thump, thump!

Kim Si-hyuk executed the simplest method to fix a broken machine.

Of course, no miraculous repair occurred.

“Director. Director?”

Chiiiiii-

Against that backdrop, Yeon-woo turned his gaze.

The basement door was half-open.

He felt a very thick energy emanating from there.

‘This is a bit…… dangerous, isn’t it?’

The moment he took a step, he knew.

An ice-cold energy wrapped around his entire body, starting from his toes.

The basement was very neat and clean, befitting the mansion.

That’s what made it even stranger.

“Why is it so clean here……?”

Unlike the first floor, which someone had entered and made a mess of.

It was as if no one dared to enter this place out of fear.

Everything was arranged in an illogical manner.

“It’s so clean, but where is this awful smell coming from? Is there a corpse buried somewhere?”

Gu Jun-wook, who followed behind, frowned and looked around.

It was then.

Chichichichik!

A tremendous noise erupted from the radio.

Startled, Kim Si-hyuk dropped the radio to the floor.

The corner hit the floor directly, shattering the radio.

Broken plastic scattered in all directions.

Chichik-

Static still leaked from the fragments scattered on the floor.

Everyone stared at the broken radio with disbelief.

Even if we concede a hundred times that only the exterior is broken, the receiving function is still intact.

But…….

“The battery is detached, but there’s still sound……?”

The battery, lying alone next to the broken fragments, was almost like something out of a horror movie.

And the radio, still making static, also felt unreal.

Chichik-

Chik-

Inside the silent basement where everyone held their breath.

Only the noise, like static from a radio with mismatched frequencies, filled the space suffocatingly.

“T-there…… that…….”

Kim Si-hyuk pointed with a trembling finger at the radio he had dropped and shattered.

“Wait a minute. Stay calm. Sometimes, when you’re extremely stressed, you can experience auditory or visual hallucinations…….”

Min Ye-rin also calmly swallowed whatever words came to mind.

At first, she thought she had misheard.

She just thought the static sounded strange.

In fact, the situation was absurd.

Static coming from a broken radio with the battery detached?

But there weren’t just one or two pairs of eyes and ears that saw and heard it.

Unless they were all on some kind of drug-induced collective hallucination, this situation made no sense.

That’s how unreal reality felt.

It was too surreal.

Chichik-

Chik……

The sound intermittently cut off and then resumed, as if someone was pressing and releasing a button.

It was right then that a strange noise began to mix with the sound.

Chik- Chichik-

After that, a thin, high-pitched whispering sound was constantly murmuring.

The sound, combined with the static, made the already chilly air in the basement even colder.

And that wasn’t all.

The unintelligible mumbling grew louder.

The noise also increased in volume along with it.

And in the middle of that.

The sound was mixed in.

Chik…… gi…… Chichik-

Not clear, but not ambiguous.

It was definitely a voice.

Moreover, it was a voice with a clear purpose to convey a message.

Kim Si-hyuk silently turned to look at Yeon-woo.

The enormously widened eyes were asking.

‘I’m not the only one hearing this, right? Right?’

Ignoring the desperate gaze pleading for him to say so, Yeon-woo looked down again at the radio emitting static.

Chichik-

Chik…….

The static no longer sounded like a mere communication channel interference from the radio.

It sounded as if someone was breathing roughly.

One syllable, one syllable.

A rough, grotesque, repulsive voice, as if dragged up from hell, spoke.

Chik- Hel……p…… Chichik……!

This message was a little clearer.

Too distinct to deny hearing if you had ears.

A terrible but clear voice.

Everyone had to listen, frozen, as that voice repeated the same words over and over.

Save me.

Find me.

We are here.

It was a desperate voice pleading for help.

A gruesome but equally desperate rescue message from the afterlife.

But the problem was that the situation in which they were hearing it was very bad.

A bizarre situation where strange things kept happening.

The eerie sound coming from the broken radio.

On top of that, a strange message from an unknown entity.

How many people would be able to judge this entire situation calmly and rationally?

“Assistant Director.”

When Yeon-woo called out to the assistant director, the assistant director, suddenly brought back to reality, jumped in surprise.

“Ack! Aack!”

The loud scream was a bonus.

The assistant director, who had been writhing and jumping as if a cockroach had crawled into his back, barely calmed down.

Holding his chest and panting, the assistant director wiped his forehead.

His hands were soaked because he had been frozen in place, sweating profusely since the sound started coming from the broken radio.

Even though it was clearly cold enough to see his breath, his clothes had long been soaked with cold sweat.

[Is this person going to have a heart attack? Why are they so weak? They’re the ones who brought them here.]

Why indeed.

It was probably because they didn’t know the situation would be this terrible.

“Wh-why did you call me?”

“Just now. Was that Director Gil’s voice?”

A strange voice mixed with a lot of noise.

A bizarre tone that sounded like it was echoing from deep inside a cave, or like someone who hadn’t opened their mouth for a long time was forcibly making a metallic sound.

Even the polyphonic sound of fast-tempo, high-pitched whispers that could be heard through the static.

All of that mixed together could never be PD Gil’s voice.

“Absolutely, absolutely not.”

The assistant director shook his head.

“The director’s voice isn’t that low or cracked. And…… he wouldn’t be making so much noise around him either. Because if the audio gets distorted, it’s a problem…….”

The assistant director inadvertently blurted out the fact that they had decided to keep secret from the cast.

It was because he didn’t have the mental capacity to hide the truth.

Fortunately, none of the cast members had the mental capacity to understand it.

Right now, something else was more important than such trivial facts.

Min Ye-rin, whose already pale face had turned even whiter, quietly asked.

A question that everyone suspected but couldn’t bring themselves to ask.

“Then…… if it’s not the director, then whose voice is that……?”

What followed was almost chaos.

That’s because, as if answering Min Ye-rin’s question, the radio once again emitted a harsh noise.

Chichik-

Chik-

Everyone looked down with fearful eyes at the shattered radio and the radio attached to their waists.

The desire to throw it away immediately surged like a chimney, but they couldn’t move a single fingertip.

What if they threw it, and it shattered as it was.

But despite that, it still worked perfectly like Kim Si-hyuk’s broken radio?

When people experience incomprehensible situations, they often resort to escapism.

Even if they can dismiss one thing as a delusion through self-hypnosis, it becomes difficult to insist it’s a delusion when several things happen simultaneously.

It can’t be.

That’s how everyone was turning their happy circuits [mentally processing the situation with disbelief].

“There might be, there might be interference. C-cough, cough. And the worst case is that someone might have obtained our radio…… right…….”

The assistant director realized that even after saying it, it was an absurd hypothesis.

When they entered this place.

There were excuses they had plausibly made up about an accident or something.

“Maybe he had a big accident to the point of losing consciousness…….”

“It turns out this place is a famous haunted house experience location…… outsiders sometimes…….”

Those were the very excuses they had swallowed to scare the performers and send them into a hidden camera setup.

It was obvious, but it was all fake.

PD Gil Sang-jun was not injured, let alone perfectly fine, waiting at the garage entrance,

And the other staff members were also firmly entrenched in designated points in the corner of the abandoned house without a single person missing.

The remaining staff members were waiting in front of the garage for the actors who had been thoroughly deceived and scared out of their minds.

So the reality was that there was no one who had lost a radio, no incident of losing it, and no chance of losing it.

‘There’s no way the director would manage it so carelessly. And there’s no way he would push the actors into a dangerous place where outsiders come and go. So that can’t be…… absolutely can’t be an outsider…….’

As soon as he realized that fact, the assistant director’s face turned pale.

All the other actors who were waiting for the assistant director’s answer witnessed that scene clearly.

It was the moment when trust in the assistant director hit 0.

Chichik, chik-

Just as a short static was heard…….

Kkyaaaaaaak!

A bloodcurdling scream that seemed to tear the ears was heard.

At first glance, it sounded like high-frequency noise that occurs when you accidentally touch a microphone or speaker…….

But everyone in this place instinctively felt it.

That’s not a systemic error sound coming from equipment malfunction.

That is…….

“Aaaagh!”

“Ugh!”

“Aaaaaaagh!”

I don’t know who started it first.

It started with someone jumping out of the basement as if having a seizure.

The group that ran out of the basement as if all thoughts of saving PD Gil had evaporated ran in the exact opposite direction from which they had come.

Their reaction was so quick and swift,

[Wow. Everyone runs really fast?]

The child spirit watching clapped, clap, clap.

Then he asked Yeon-woo.

[So. What are you going to do?]

“About what?”

[Here. Seeing how much is coming out, I think there are probably at least more than ten fingers?]

“I think so too.”

[Well. It seems like we can just leave it alone and film. Even if these guys cause harm, it’ll only be as much as struggling with the radio. Well……. Sometimes you meet ghosts in haunted houses like this. There’s also a jinx that you’ll be a hit if you meet a ghost, right?]

The child spirit shrugged.

[But Yeon-woo, you. You don’t seem to be thinking of just passing by? You used to hate this kind of thing, right?]

“I can’t help it.”

One of the reasons why Yeon-woo had no choice but to come down to the basement.

It was also because of the familiar phrase floating above the head of the spirit staring at him with mournful eyes.

[Harvestable lifespan: +30 days]

There was a similar phrase on each of the heads that popped out of the basement simultaneously.

[Harvestable lifespan: +45 days]

[Harvestable lifespan…]

[Harvestable…]

It’s not just because I’m greedy for lifespan.

It just bothered me that the fact that there were so many desperate souls tied to this place to the point of offering their lifespan meant something.