TAHBPC 03

Chapter 03

 I Want to Quit

I should quit.

At this point, I was completely convinced this wasn’t a dream or a hallucination.

Even if it feels hopeless, it’s still the right choice.

Any sane person, no matter how good the benefits were, wouldn’t want to work at a company crawling with monsters.

A salary of 68 million won a year be damned.

Nothing was worth more than my life.

How am I supposed to bring it up…?

Making the decision was surprisingly easy.

Actually saying the words was a completely different matter.

Especially when your boss was a monster.

Whew…

I exhaled silently and stayed on guard.

When would be the most natural moment to say it?

Would casually slipping it into a conversation make it less suspicious?

Or should I be serious and straightforward?

If I said I wanted to quit, would all seven of those mouths bite me at the same time?

I still couldn’t figure out which of the fourteen eyes I was supposed to look at while speaking.

One face was watching the news.

One was reading a newspaper.

One was sipping coffee through a straw.

One kept glancing at me.

The fact that I was standing here trying to find the right timing to talk to that thing was absurd in itself.

I couldn’t put it off any longer.

Wasn’t this exactly the kind of situation where there was nothing else a person could do?

Either I stayed silent, broke down, and died—

or I spoke up and got torn apart by a monster.

At least this way, I could die knowing I’d done everything I could.

With that thought, I stood up and approached Manager Myeon.

The uneven breathing of his many faces created a disturbing cacophony.

When I stopped beside him, the seven-faced creature slowly spun around in his office chair.

More accurately, several of the faces turned toward me.

“What is it, Employee Jeong?”

The most human-looking face spoke.

I remained calm.

Honest.

Direct.

“I’d like to resign.”

The air in the room seemed to solidify.

One by one, the seven faces looked at me.

Suspicion.

Disappointment.

Anger.

Mockery.

Fear.

Curiosity.

Indifference.

Each emotion passed over me in turn.

In the silence that followed, every face eventually settled into the same expression.

Displeasure.

“…You said resign?”

There was no mistaking the emotion.

The moment the words left my mouth, my senses became a little clearer.

I wiped away the sweat that had started flowing again and forced my trembling lips to remain steady.

I have to answer.

I hated the idea of working with monsters.

Working for monsters.

All of it.

Looking as apologetic as possible, I met Manager Myeon’s gaze.

“Yes. I think I need to leave.”

“On your very first day? You haven’t even completed your training or handover procedures yet…”

“I’m sorry. Something urgent came up. I just received word.”

“Word? A family matter?”

One of the faces asked.

I couldn’t tell which one had spoken.

I answered without hesitation.

“Yes. I received news that my mother collapsed due to a chronic illness… Her condition sounds serious.”

It was a lie.

I couldn’t even remember what my mother looked like.

Several seconds passed.

One of Manager Myeon’s faces nodded.

“A family matter… I understand. That’s unfortunate. You were the first truly promising recruit I’ve seen in a long time.”

Was he really accepting it that easily?

Several faces bit their lips as though genuinely disappointed.

Then Manager Myeon calmly opened a drawer and handed me a small card.

“The Human Resources Office is on Basement Level Three. The elevator won’t normally go below ground level, so you’ll need this.”

The card was made of metal.

No symbols or writing were engraved on its surface.

Yet the moment it touched my skin, a chill spread through my body.

“Thank you…”

As I bowed my head in gratitude, all seven faces smiled.

Their lips stretched toward their ears.

Some narrowed their eyes.

Others bared their teeth.

For the first time, every face looked genuinely friendly.

That only made it more unsettling.

Click.

The office door closed behind me.

The hallway was eerily silent.

What…? Why?

Hiding my impatience, I walked toward the elevator at the end of the corridor.

The moment I held the blank card against the panel, the doors slid open.

As soon as I stepped inside, the elevator began descending without me pressing a button.

There wasn’t even a vibration.

Somehow, it felt as though something was tapping against my skin from the inside.

Doesn’t matter. I don’t know why, but once I quit, I’m going straight home. This is just a nightmare. Or maybe I’m sick.

The elevator doors opened.

Unlike the brightly lit office floors, Basement Level Three had no light.

Or perhaps there was light, but my eyes couldn’t interpret it.

It felt less like seeing colors and more like perceiving sensations.

Carefully, I stepped forward.

The floor beneath my shoes was damp.

Each step produced the sound of water squelching underfoot.

The corridor walls didn’t display the words “Human Resources Office.”

Instead, blurry ink-like shapes spread across the surface.

When I reached the door, I noticed someone already standing there.

The crouched figure seemed to notice my approach and jerked her head upward as though having a seizure.

“H-Hiiik! Stay away!”

A woman.

A complete stranger.

She wore a business suit, though several buttons were missing and her knees were scraped raw.

The first thought that crossed my mind was simple.

There’s another human here?

I stopped where I stood.

Was she really human?

She certainly looked human.

I bit my lip deliberately.

Pain spread through my mouth.

Definitely not a dream.

Holding onto that tiny bit of hope, I carefully assessed her condition.

Trembling skin.

Dilated pupils.

Shoulders heaving from hyperventilation.

Based on fragmented bits of old knowledge, she looked completely broken by fear.

Finding another person in a company full of monsters should have been comforting.

Unfortunately, she wasn’t in any condition to share that feeling.

“First, calm down.”

Speaking in a low, steady tone was one of the most basic ways to signal that you weren’t a threat.

The woman slowly turned toward me.

“A-A person? You’re really a person? You aren’t… you aren’t one of those monsters, are you?”

Her voice was already hoarse.

White residue from dried saliva clung to the corners of her mouth.

I could imagine the ordeal she’d been through just from looking at her.

“Yes. I’m human. I came to the Human Resources Office to submit my resignation.”

The moment she heard the word resignation, tears poured from her eyes.

She grabbed my pant leg and burst into choking sobs.

“Ahhh…! I-I thought I was alone! Th-There was… a monkey… a monkey in a suit… it greeted me…”

She couldn’t finish the sentence.

Every attempt to breathe seemed to catch in her throat.

That alone was enough.

She had seen what I had seen.

Lee Ji-hyeon.

The name tag pinned crookedly to her chest caught my eye.

We were in the same situation.

Yet our states couldn’t have been more different.

“At least that’s good news. We both made it this far. Maybe you and I can actually quit.”

“Good news? We can leave? Really? No…! That’s not how I got here! That monkey took my contract and sent me here! It said I’d already signed it! It forced my fingerprint onto the document!”

She frantically rubbed her index finger against her shirt.

The skin had already peeled away and begun bleeding.

She didn’t seem to notice the pain.

I was afraid too.

My heart was racing.

Cold sweat soaked my skin.

But the longer I looked at her, the stronger the feeling grew that something was terribly wrong.

“We need to call the police… the Labor Office too… This is a violation of human rights. It’s imprisonment. Assault. Right? M-My phone won’t work because of that weird security app…”

Lee Ji-hyeon continued muttering without waiting for a response.

Then it happened.

A horrifying scraping noise echoed through the hallway.

Like fingernails dragged across steel.

The tightly shut door to the Human Resources Office slowly creaked open.

“Next. Lee Ji-hyeon.”

The voice that emerged wasn’t really a voice.

It sounded more like clashing metal.

“Ah… ahh…”

Lee Ji-hyeon lacked even the strength to scream.

Only weak gasps escaped her lips.

Then, like a puppet being pulled by invisible strings, she staggered forward into the darkness.

By that point, my mind was focused on something else entirely.

More specifically, the lie I’d told Manager Myeon.

“My phone won’t work because of that weird security app…”

Manager Myeon was the one who had installed the security app on my phone this morning.

No messages had arrived.

No calls.

“A family matter… I understand. That’s unfortunate. You were the first truly promising recruit I’ve seen in a long time.”

“Ah… ah…”

Manager Myeon had known from the very beginning that I was lying.

Then why had he let me go?

Out of sympathy?

No.

Had he simply not cared?

That made even less sense.

A new employee he personally interviewed had announced their resignation on their first day.

And he was supposedly too sympathetic—or too lazy—to care?

Before I could reach a conclusion, a voice emerged from the open doorway.

“Jeong Hae-il. Please come in.”

Slowly, I obeyed.

The moment I crossed the threshold, the air froze.

The Human Resources Office wasn’t an office at all.

The entire room was drenched in crimson.

Walls.

Ceiling.

Floor.

Everything was soaked in blood.

The structures I had mistaken for desks were actually heaps of flesh with organs spilling out from within.

And at the very center of the room sat a colossal figure, so large it nearly touched the ceiling.

A baby.

Or rather, something vaguely resembling a human infant, twisted into something monstrous.

Its skin glistened like wet mucus.

Instead of hair, thin tentacles writhed atop its head.

It had four eyes.

One embedded in its forehead.

Another lodged inside its wide, blood-soaked mouth.

Its nose was merely a split in its flesh.

Its breathing sounded like the heavy snoring of an adult.

It was smiling.

A horrifying smile.

With toothless infant gums.

Blood and pus dripped from its mouth as it sucked on a bloodstained finger.

I couldn’t take a single step.

My legs refused to move.

My throat burned.

It felt as though my body was shutting down its own senses in self-defense.

Yet my eyes wouldn’t close.

As if forcing me to witness every horrifying detail.

“Jeong Hae-il.”

That wasn’t the monster speaking.

The voice was definitely human.

Somewhere in the room.

Yet I couldn’t turn my head.

The giant creature’s gaze—or perhaps merely its presence—pressed down on my entire body.

Carefully, I forced myself to ask:

“Where… is Lee Ji-hyeon?”

The baby monster let out an enormous belch.

Something churned inside its stomach.

A wet gurgling sound echoed from within.

Then something surged upward through its throat.

Blaaaargh.

The monster spat.

What splattered onto the floor amid a torrent of saliva was an unrecognizable mass of flesh.

Mixed within the red meat were the collar of a white shirt and a half-melted employee ID card bearing a name.

“She resigned.”

Those two words descended upon me with a terror colder and deeper than Basement Level Three itself.

Cold sweat trickled down my back.

Even as my vision blurred, I understood.

“Ah… resigned…”

The monster’s voice sounded sweet.

Like candy rolling around in the mouth.

The tone was strangely familiar.

As though it had spoken that word countless times before.

Soft.

Satisfied.

Pleased.

Instinctively, I knew.

This monster loved resignations.

The word.

The act.

The result.

It didn’t treat resignation letters like paperwork.

It accepted them like sacrifices.

The corners of its mouth slowly curled upward.

In this place, resignation didn’t mean leaving a company.

It meant leaving life itself.

Frozen in place, I couldn’t move an inch.

“So then, Jeong Hae-il.”

As it called my name again, I slowly raised my eyes.

The baby monster’s gummy smile was now directly before me.

The eye embedded in its forehead.

The eye inside its mouth.

All four eyes stared at me simultaneously.

It wasn’t looking at me.

It was evaluating me.

Like a predator deciding whether its prey could be hunted, chewed, and swallowed.

“What brings you here?”

Its voice scraped across my eardrums like a rusted blade.

Not the voice of a child.

The voice of an adult.

A fully mature mind wearing the body of an infant.

Somewhere in the room, liquid dripped steadily.

I couldn’t tell whether it came from the ceiling or whether the walls themselves were bleeding.

The creature pulled its finger from its mouth.

Strings of saliva stretched between them.

It stared at me.

I placed one hand over my chest and slowly exhaled.

Clenching my teeth, I carefully opened my mouth, determined not to let my voice shake.