[Chat] : The new members of Ghost Story Minor Gallery would like to introduce themselves.
Author: Maestro
@Anon (190.5)
@Anon (112.5)
……
@Anon (231.3)
@Maestro
We hereby declare that the seven anomalies listed above have successfully joined Ghost Story Minor Gallery.
We will do our utmost not to bring disgrace upon our senior anomalies.
Thank you.
[Total Comments - 12]
EightSpiderLegs: What the hell is this;;
└EightSpiderLegs: I get home and another nuke has dropped.
└WhiteBear: Another? What was the first one?
└EightSpiderLegs: Rookie.
└WhiteBear: Ah hahahahaha.
└CountlessTeeth: That wasn’t a nuke, it was the Big Bang, hahaha.
CleanlinessKing: Fine, new members showed up.
└CleanlinessKing: But why are these guys so damn strong too?
└InstrumentBundle: Now that you mention it,
└InstrumentBundle: Even the weakest one is over 190? Holy shit.
└ClassTime: Right? Why did people like this suddenly fall out of the sky?
└CleanlinessKing: I have no idea...
"New members... So there are beings I do not know about yet."
A white conductor’s uniform so pristine it brought obsessive cleanliness to mind.
An absurdly tall frame, and a staff of musical notation running diagonally across his face.
The newly born ghost story, Maestro.
As he stared at the gallery screen, he lightly tapped the floor with his baton.
No.
Crunch!
"Guaaaargh...!!"
"What a vulgar tone."
He had stabbed the eyeball of the man pinned to the floor.
Blinded, the man wept tears of blood.
He dragged himself across the floor, trying to escape him.
"Violin, where do you think you are going?"
Yet rather than chase after the man, Maestro raised a hand and lightly swept it through the air.
Craaaack.
"A-aaargh...!!!"
"Someone with your lack of skill needs supplementary practice."
The man’s body began to compress.
His bones lengthened and thinned, becoming strings.
His flesh rounded into a body.
His heart split into four, becoming tuning pegs.
The man, who had once undeniably been human, had become a string instrument.
Twang—
"That’s right. I look forward to working with you."
Maestro tested the strings and smiled in satisfaction.
After sweeping his gaze over the audience seats from the empty stage, he was about to return to the waiting room.
Clang!!
"...!?"
"Huh? That got blocked!?"
Kang Seoyun, falling from above, had struck his shoulder with her leg.
Maestro had failed to react, but he defended against her attack with the sheer toughness of his body.
"What kind of humanoid anomaly makes a metallic sound when you hit it? I even used the branch chief’s ability..."
"...A rabbit?"
Kang Seoyun stepped back and rubbed her calf.
Twitch, twitch.
Rabbit ears wriggled atop her head.
"Are you a ghost story?"
"What nonsense are you spouting... I’m the lead agent of the Bureau’s Third Exploration Team. Don’t lump me in with the likes of you."
Kang Seoyun’s expression hardened as she glared at Maestro.
Her gaze was plainly hostile.
As though it reminded her of something from the past, her reaction was excessively sharp.
"Is that so? All the better, then."
But as if her reaction did not matter to him in the least, Maestro lightly raised his hand again.
"I do not want to recruit the seniors into my orchestra just yet."
Swish.
He flicked his hand toward Kang Seoyun.
Then an unpleasant sensation swept over her.
"...Hm?"
However, nothing changed for Kang Seoyun.
The strange wind that had enveloped her vanished without a trace as her rabbit ears twitched.
"Do you take the Bureau for a bunch of idiots? Of course the team leader gave us resistance to special attacks."
"Oh? That is one more piece of knowledge I did not possess."
"...Let me ask you one thing."
Maestro stared intently at her ears.
His expression was like that of a child who had spotted a toy, and Kang Seoyun asked with a frown.
"Why are you so obsessed with knowledge? Earlier too, you were spacing out over those new members or whatever."
"How rude. You were spying on me."
Tap.
Maestro struck his baton against his palm.
"To accumulate experience."
"Experience...?"
"Yes. Only when I can experience and understand everything in this world can I finally create the finest orchestra."
For some reason, it was a goal that had been imprinted upon him from the moment he awoke on this stage.
To present the world with the finest orchestra.
That was Maestro’s purpose.
"For the day that is sure to come."
Just as Maestro pointed his baton at Kang Seoyun—
"I absolutely must recruit you into my orchestra—"
"Y-yes? Here!?"
"...?"
"Branch Chief! Why are you trying to fulfill an anomaly’s desire!?"
Kang Seoyun abruptly grabbed her ear and began shouting.
It was not that fear had driven her mad.
A black, glossy earpiece was attached beside her ear.
"No, it’s just... Ha... Fine, I understand. We’ll be entering the Void soon, so we need to conserve our strength."
Looking resigned, Kang Seoyun ran a hand down her face and pointed at Maestro.
"You there, humanoid anomaly."
"I am Maestro."
"Yes, yes, Maestro. Aren’t you curious about how you were born?"
At her words, Maestro’s eyes flashed.
The birth of ghost stories and anomalies.
It was the greatest experience Maestro had continued to ponder, information that had not even been revealed on the gallery.
"Do you know that?"
"I don’t. But the team leader says he can tell you."
After tapping on her phone a few times, Kang Seoyun tossed it to Maestro.
The phone halted in midair at Maestro’s gesture, then was drawn into his gray-gloved hand.
"...It is a map."
"Go to the spot marked there. There’ll be a part-timer who smells strangely like a ghost story. That man says he’ll tell you."
Perhaps she had received an order to return.
Kang Seoyun took out a [Ghost Story Escape Button] and spoke.
"You’re only allowed to touch that part-timer. If you touch the boss there, I’ll really kill you."
"I shall keep that in mind—if what you say is true."
"...I’ll be trusting you."
Vwoooong.
Kang Seoyun vanished amid blue mist.
Left alone, Maestro stood where he was, gazing endlessly at the map on the phone.
"How I was born..."
It was not very credible.
There was no way an insignificant human part-timer could know information that even ghost stories themselves did not properly understand.
But if, just if, he knew the answer to this question, would retreating now not be a bad move?
"I will seek him out on the off chance I am being deceived. But if it turns out to be a lie..."
Thrum.
Countless instruments appeared behind him.
String instruments. Woodwinds. Brass instruments. Percussion instruments.
Their kinds, colors, and arrangements were all diverse.
Amid that majestic, noble sight, Maestro raised his baton high.
"You will have to become part of my orchestra."
And he began rehearsing for a performance that might soon open.
**
"Achoo! Sniff..."
「A cold?」
"I think so. Do we have any cold medicine saved up?"
Having come to the Backrooms for the first time in a while, I blew my nose into a tissue as I spoke.
They said you sneezed whenever someone talked about you.
Still, that probably wasn’t it. This wasn’t a novel, after all.
"Anyway, the response is great. I guess seeing all those ghost stories improved my writing even more."
I was reading the comments on the post I had uploaded to Ghost Story Minor Gallery.
[Total Comments - 53]
ThreeThreeDrot: It feels so good to see the head mod’s writing again after so long ㅠㅠㅠ
└CheekChompChomp: For real, I missed it so much.
└CheekChompChomp: Does it seem even scarier than before somehow?
└TissueBox: So I wasn’t the only one who felt that.
└WantToFightIRL: Maybe it feels more vivid, is how I’d put it.
└WantToFightIRL: Like, if you compared it to a restaurant, it’s like going from Kang Daniel’s mom’s home cooking to a boiled Michelin-starred meal.
└ChiliSauce: What the hell is that even supposed to feel like, dude...
……
"Damn, look at that comment count. It’s more than twice what it used to be."
「Because of me」
"Yeah, yeah. It’s all thanks to our Backrooms."
Vigorously stroking the Backrooms’ walls, I operated my phone and checked the notification window.
[1,321 living beings have felt fear.]
[+132 GP!]
[434 living beings have felt intense fear.]
[+86 GP!]
[You have obtained a total of 218 GP.]
The number of ghost stories I had posted was seven.
Those ghost stories had frightened over a thousand people.
And the GP I had earned as a result was right there in front of me.
What I could do with this was obvious as day.
[Would you like to enhance the Status Window?]
[GP Cost: 100]
[Remaining GP: 248 GP]
"Hell yeah, damn right."
「Bad word」
"...Watermelon."
Accepting the Backrooms’ adorable correction of my foul language, I enhanced the Status Window.
[Enhancement successful!]
[The following special abilities have been unlocked!]
[Ghost Story Enhancement] (new!)
[Ghost Story Summoning] (new!)
[Ghost Story Trust Increase] (new!)
[Cost for the next enhancement: 1000 GP]
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