Seoul Object Story
Chapter 91: The Pudding Factory (3)

As everyone fell silent, the ringing sound of the cell phone loudly asserted its dominance.

“W-What should I do?”

“What else? You have to answer it. You can’t not take it, right?”

Gulp-!

The factory worker swallowed hard, visibly trembling.

It’s just a phone call—why’s he so scared?

He shut his eyes tightly and tried to answer, but his hands were shaking too much. It wasn’t working.

Hiding in the shadow of the employee, I turned off my phantom form, pressed his finger to the screen, and slid it.

“Ugh!”

The factory worker was so shocked that he dropped the cell phone to the ground. He looked around wildly, rubbing his fingers in fear.

Hihihi! Even if you look around like that, you won’t see me! Hehe, I’ve already put my phantom form back on!

[ I heard a loud noise. Did something happen? ]

A voice came from the cell phone lying on the ground.

Leaving the terrified worker be, another factory worker picked up the phone and answered.

“Everything’s fine. Don’t worry owner.”

[ Is that so? Very well. Anyway, I’m trying to escape, but I think it’ll take me at least a day to get out of here. ]

“Ah… So, um, the Object in the factory hasn’t been dealt with yet?”

[ No, the re-containment attempt failed. Fortunately, the bear is so big that it can’t fit into narrow spaces. I’m currently crawling on the ceiling. I’ll be out in about a day, so I’ll see you then. Byebye~ ]

“So, you don’t need to be rescued?”

[ Hmm, well, it would be better if no one entered and caused a scene. We will discuss the next re-containment schedule after I get out. ]

“I understand, owner!”

When the call ended, the tense atmosphere suddenly relaxed.

“Do you think it’s really the owner this time?”

“Well, It’s the owner’s phone number and the owner’s voice, so it’s probably him.”

“The previous call was like that too. We just found it suspicious because he said something strange like Block B.”

“By the way, was there always space in the ceiling?”

“Huh? How should I know? Who in their right mind would willingly go there and check?”

The workers’ mood was still uneasy. The previous call had been too strange for them to be purely happy that the owner was alive.

Hmm, a strange call from someone with the owner’s voice and the owner’s phone number…

Even though I just came here for the puddings, it suddenly felt like I was now in a mystery drama.

A Golden Reaper peeked out from the Garden of the Golden Reapers that occupied the backyard of the Sehee Research Institute.

This particular Golden Reaper was carrying something precious—pudding. Balanced carefully on its back, the pudding wobbled gently as it moved.

Even though it knew that the creator wasn’t around, it still didn’t skip its usual careful check of the surroundings.

If I get caught, the last pudding will be taken away by the creator! So, I need to be careful!

It couldn’t afford to let its guard down. After all, the creator—known for their sneaky tricks—could just lie about their location if they wanted to.

The little reaper’s less cautious colleagues? They’d all lost their pudding.

Despite their despairing tears, the pudding never came back. It was gone, for all of eternity.

The Golden Reaper was determined not to let that happen again. Not for the sake of the poor humans who hadn’t had a taste of the really, really delicious pudding.

A large door loomed ahead, separating the backyard from the inside of the institute.

Normally, the Golden Reaper could pass through it easily with its phantom form, but not now. It needed to move the pudding too, after all.

Hearing footsteps, the Golden Reaper quickly hid itself. It couldn’t let the humans catch it either.

If the humans didn’t get the pudding, they’d be sad, and when humans were sad, it hurt the Golden Reaper’s heart.

It hid in the shadows near the door, patiently waiting for it to open. As soon as it did, the Golden Reaper slipped inside, sneaking past the door.

Hihi! Now, it just needed to reach its favorite human without being found in a building full of humans!

With a determined expression, the Golden Reaper gathered all its will. This mission was too important to fail.

The case at the pudding factory was becoming more and more confusing.

Ah, I’m dizzy.

When I returned to the car, I saw the Gray Reaper suddenly jumping onto the unoccupied backseat.

Ah, as expected, it followed me with its phantom form.

Lifting the Reaper from the backseat, I placed it on my lap and hugged it tight.

Maybe because I hugged it so often, Reaper naturally relaxed and surrendered its body to me.

“Reaper… What’s going on, I wonder? It definitely seems like something serious is going on, but I can’t figure out what…”

In the midst of all my confusion, I felt calm as I hugged the soft and warm Reaper.

The Gray Reaper’s expression that I saw in the rearview mirror was the same as always—expressionless.

It was just lazing in my arms like a teddy bear, just staring into the abyss without any thoughts, like a cat.

“There were two phone calls from the owner. Which one is real, I wonder? Hmm, maybe they are both fake? Who knows…”

No matter how much I thought about it, I still didn’t know.

Guess I’ll have to do some healing by hugging Reaper until something came to mind.

I could feel Yerin’s complicated feelings, all tangled up like a ball of yarn.

It’s such a simple problem, really, but she was making it all twisty and complicated.

When I lay down in the backseat, Yerin didn’t lie down with me. Instead, she played with the soles of my feet.

Strange. Yerin always followed me whenever I lay down… Oh! Was she giving me a massage?

It wouldn’t be of much use, though.

Now back to where I was earlier. The two phone calls from earlier had totally opposite messages.

The first call said, ‘Gather as many people as possible and come rescue us!’

While the second call said, ‘Wait until I escape!’

If the first call was fake, whoever made it probably wanted to lure a bunch of people in.

That’s totally something a lure-type Object would do.

If the second call was fake, whoever made it didn’t want people to come in.

It was hard to imagine an Object that spoke human language but was reluctant to interact with humans, so it was probably a human who made that call.

This was one of those situations where what we should depended on whether the culprit was a human or an Object.

Yaaaahhmm…

Even though I didn’t have any lungs, I still yawned for some reason.

Before I thought it was a habit from when I was still human, carried over to this body.

But seeing that the Golden Reapers also yawn sometimes, I figured we might yawn for a different reason than humans.

Or, it could be something else entirely. I don’t know, maybe Objects were originally created to mimic humans.

Yaaaahhmm…

I suddenly felt so sleepy.

Flap-! Flap-!

I felt like I’d fall asleep if Yerin kept massaging me, so I shook my legs and kicked her hand away.

Only noise could be heard from the smartwatch, which had been connecting perfectly well just a moment ago.

“Oh, my. It’s disconnected,” James said nonchalantly, glancing at his watch.

“Why? Why did you say that?”

“Hmm? What are you talking about?”

“What you said in the call! If help doesn’t come right away, we will die!”

Bang-! Bang-!

The sound of something being smashed echoed from outside the management office. Metal was being crushed and broken mercilessly.

“What…what the hell is that?”

“They probably noticed that the call was made from one of the management offices, so the teddy bear’s probably destroying them. The sound’s likely coming from the management office in building 2.”

Unlike the shivering, frightened interpreter, James’ voice was as calm as his demeanor.

“I’m gonna die. I’m sure now, if rescue doesn’t come, both of us will die. Soon enough the teddy bear will come to this management office too… It’s over.” The interpreter held his head and spoke gloomily.

The steel teddy bear was systematically destroying the management offices one by one.

The sound of destruction was still far from them, but it would definitely reach their location eventually.

Stomp-! Stomp-!

To the interpreter, the sound of heavy footsteps echoing in the distance felt infinitely similar to those of predators seen in movies.

“Why are you so anxious? There’s no need to be so impatient. Chill,” James continued with a relaxed expression.

“According to my prediction, it will take about fifteen hours for the teddy bear to reach this management office. There’s still plenty of time. So, just get a good night’s sleep in the bed provided in this office.”

“T-Then, if rescue doesn’t come within fifteen hours, doesn’t that mean that we’ll die?!!”

“Yup, that’s right.”

“Then, why did you tell the ones on the outside that nonsense? Block B? Milling machine? What even is that? Why didn’t you say it clearly? ‘The management office on the second floor of building 2’ see? Simple! Then why…? Why did you…?”

The interpreter collapsed on the floor and sobbed.

Meanwhile, James just shook his head, looking at the interpreter with a pitying expression.

“I guess you aren’t very smart, huh? Didn’t I tell you that this incident was orchestrated by humans?”

“?”

James continued, giving further explanation to the now attentive interpreter.

“If I tell them our exact location, isn’t it obvious the teddy bear will come to split our heads before any rescue arrives?”

“Will people come here just because you said Block B and milling machine?”

“Of course. The factory officials will definitely figure it out, but it’s a hint that the terrorists wouldn’t understand.”

Hope flickered back into the interpreter’s eyes.

“The terrorists aren’t idiots, so if I give them a vague hint, they’ll look for old blueprints of this factory to figure it out.”

“I guess so?”

“But there is neither a Block B nor milling machines in the old factory blueprint. That’s where the terrorists will give up. They’ll then choose other means, just like the teddy bear.”

“Is that so?”

“But here’s the secret. There’s a factory that looks exactly like this one in Busan. If they compare the blueprint of that factory with this one, the rescue team can instantly confirm our location.”

“Who in the world will notice something like that?!!!”

The interpreter shouted, forgetting the murderous teddy bear roaming the factory.

His newfound hope quickly vanished as he slumped back to the floor in despair.

“It’s all over now…”

I just gave up thinking.

Did I really need to know which call was real? The first one or the second one? About Block B and the milling machines? Psh, why should I worry about that?

The important thing was getting into the factory and ripping the head of that steel teddy bear.

Wait, that bear wasn’t part of the pudding factory, was it?

Once I finished mulling it over, I stood up and Yerin noticed right away.

“You want to go into the factory? Then I’ll go with you!”

She smiled brightly and followed me.

Together, we quietly headed to the factory entrance. Thanks to the phone call from the owner, only a few people were standing guard.

“It’s kind of fun. It’s like playing hide and seek when I was a kid,” Yerin said excitedly. Maybe her excitement was contagious as I couldn’t help but get excited too.

We hopped from shadow to shadow until we finally slipped through the entrance.

Inside, we were greeted by a cracked and broken parking lot and a headless corpse.

“Reaper… There’s a corpse here. Looking at his attire, he’s probably one of the Object retrieval experts who entered along with the owner,” Yerin whispered.

Thud-! Thud-! Thud-!

Heavy footsteps echoed through the parking lot.

Yerin, now nervous, held my hand tightly.

A red glow shined from the wide-open entrance of the building beyond the parking lot. Two shining crimson dots, like the eyes of a beast in the dark.

Thud-! Thud-!

With each heavy step, an Object cloaked in darkness slowly revealed itself.

It was a teddy bear-looking Object, made of shiny steel.

The teddy bear gazed into my eyes…

Thud-! Thud-!

Then slowly disappeared back into the darkness.