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Deep within the garden of the Golden Reaper.

In the most secretive and dark place where the steps of Attached Humans do not reach.

There, a secret meeting among the Golden Reapers was taking place.

It was a meeting regarding the last remaining ninja pudding.

The Golden Reapers wore unusually serious expressions.

Bouncing, bouncing!

Jumping, jumping!

With each leap, the Golden Reapers shared and adjusted their opinions.

They bumped into each other with emotions about how much pudding they needed.

Their cute gestures and leg movements were incomprehensible to humans.

But for the Golden Reapers, it was a gravely serious meeting.

And eventually, the result was announced.

The Golden Reaper who received permission to use the pudding was jumping with joy.

The Golden Reaper recognized as needing the pudding the most left with it, blessed by everyone.

Heading towards the backyard of the Sehee Research Institute, carrying a pudding much larger than themselves.

There was a passageway connected to the garden where the Gray Reaper resided.

The face of the Golden Reaper transporting the giant pudding was full of smiles.

*

“Hmm, ahem.”

James was operating the entrance to the factory control room while humming softly.

“Mr. James, please be quiet. What if we get caught at this rate?”

Behind him, a nervous-looking interpreter poked James and spoke in a small voice.

James, with a calm expression, looked around and said.

“In such a noisy place, there’s no way we would get caught by making a little noise. You’re worrying too much.”

As James said, this area was filled with the sounds of machines continuously running, along with an unpleasant warning sound blaring during emergencies.

Still, the interpreter glanced around the sinister factory, feeling uneasy.

It would be insufficient to escape, yet they were delving deeper into the factory.

It felt like performing a trick with one’s head inside a crocodile’s mouth.

The anxious interpreter poked James, who was diligently working, and said.

“Mr. James. But there’s no reason to come this deep without escaping the factory, is there? If we didn’t come here, we would have been outside by now!”

“The reason we came this far? Of course, there is. If we go out like this, we’re guaranteed to be caught by the cute bear. We’re much slower than the bear. The bear is likely moving, thinking we’re trying to escape.”

James continued while ripping the entire panel off the entrance to the control room.

“Moreover, this isn’t a regular object accident. If we don’t pull ourselves together and act wisely, we’ll die in an instant.”

“What? You mean this situation isn’t an accident?”

“I thought it was an accident at first.”

James knocked on the smartwatch strapped to his wrist.

“Since when has there ever been an object that jams communication? And it timed perfectly with our entrance too.”

“Wasn’t it because this factory is in a remote area, so the signal doesn’t reach?”

“If that were the case, we wouldn’t have received contact so quickly when the first object took control.”

Not an accident, but a terror.

The kind of terror aimed at murder had the interpreter starting to panic.

“Why on earth? Who would do such a thing? In a country like ours, a clean country for objects… Using objects for terror.”

“Being patriotic is good, but there’s one thing we need to clarify.”

James turned to the interpreter with a serious face.

“In my judgment, Korea is the most dangerous country in the world.”

“What? What do you mean? I’ve heard China has giant jellyfish flying in the sky, and the US had a giant fire-breathing wild boar devastate an entire city. At least there are no such objects in Korea; isn’t it safe?”

“That’s the curious thing about Korea. The Ice Throne in Dobong-gu, the theme park, and now the desert that has appeared. Left unchecked, tremendous destruction could arise from the objects, yet they naturally suppress or vanish.”

A cheerful mechanical sound echoed from the electronic door as the entrance to the factory control room opened.

“Oh, finally opened. Well, let’s save talking about how dangerous Korea is for another time. For now, we must analyze this site.”

What lay revealed beyond the door was a gruesome sight.

All the staff working in the management room had turned into corpses.

The interpreter turned away from the scene, tightly squeezing their eyes shut.

“Hmm, come here and have a look.”

“Absolutely not. I already fainted from seeing the steel bear crush someone; you want me to see more?”

“It might be better to look. But if you don’t want to, I can’t force you.”

At James’ words, the interpreter peered with squinty eyes towards the corpses.

“Ugh.”

The bloody corpses with heads blown apart.

“Why on earth are you making me look at this?”

“Don’t you feel anything after seeing this?”

To James, the corpses in the management room were clear evidence.

Proof that human intervention was involved.

Three management room staff who died with gunshot wounds.

The objects currently occupying the factory do not shoot guns.

“They were shot dead. And the objects occupying the factory don’t shoot.”

In Korea, where gun control remains lax even as many people die from objects, a gun-related terror.

James’ expression grew serious.

*

Yerin pushed me into the car while telling me to hide.

“Reaper, I’ll go listen for a bit. You have to hide properly, okay?”

Then she entered the gathering place of the factory staff alone.

Of course, I also ghosted out of the vehicle to watch Yerin’s performance.

Considering the serious situation, the expressions of the staff were not great, yet Yerin was adeptly digging up information more skillfully than expected.

They were involved in preparations to help with the re-isolation at the Sehee Research Institute, and they decided on this due to the need for pudding produced in this factory.

She was mixing truth and lies while conversing.

Looking at it now, Yerin is a pretty good liar.

Has she been honing her skills for a getaway?

“Wow, so a failure to isolate has only happened once a month?”

“That’s right. Because of that, our Songdo Research Institute received an award for outstanding research last year, but this year it might be tough.”

The researcher from the Songdo Research Institute, who managed the objects currently occupying the factory, sighed heavily with a gloomy expression.

After having a lengthy conversation with the researcher, Yerin clung to the factory staff and began another discussion.

“Really? So the owner of the factory personally went in, calling in a private object retrieval company? That sounds dangerous.”

“Oh, no matter how much I warn them, it’s like they’re reckless because they’re foreign. Reckless.”

“So, is that so-called owner still not reachable?”

“Even now, the youngest over there is still trying to call, but it’s not going through. Probably. This is it, this.”

A man who appeared to be a factory employee mimed across his neck, expressing the thought that the owner might be dead.

“Oh, thank you for letting me know so kindly!”

“It seems finding the owner is already a lost cause. The what’s it called, if the Sehee Research Institute is sending a retrieval team, they need to prepare thoroughly and send them!”

After finishing the conversation with the factory employee, Yerin was jotting down various notes in her notebook.

[The object currently occupying the factory is a bear-shaped robot.]

[There have been failures of isolation about once a month.]

[However, it was a very slow-moving object, so it was quickly re-isolated.]

[But now it has turned extremely agile and threatening.]

[The factory owner is currently trapped inside the factory; missing and unaccounted for.]

Just as Yerin was organizing the data in her notebook, suddenly, a phone rang.

An employee who seemed to belong to the factory picked up the phone and began making a fuss.

“Huh? Oh! This, this is the boss!”

“What are you waiting for? Answer it now!”

The slightly flustered employee switched to speakerphone and answered the call.

[Ah, can you hear me?]

“Ah, yes. I can hear you. Boss, you’re safe!”

[Ah, yes, I’m safe. There’s a jammer in the factory, so it took a while to contact you. My current location is Block B, in a small office built above the milling machine.]

“Block B, you say?”

[There are many objects here that need to be dealt with besides the bear, so I’ll need a lot of object recovery teams. I’ll take care of however much it costs, so call as many as you can.]

Phew.

The call that seemed to go on forever suddenly cut off with unnatural noise and was left to emit static sounds.

However, the factory employees who had been waiting for the owner’s call wore uneasy expressions.

“Is it really the boss?”

“An impersonator? Is someone playing a trick?”

“Could it be a seduction-type object?”

Yerin approached the flustered factory employees to ask why.

“The boss, who hadn’t been heard from, is alive and gave his location and even proposed a solution, yet everyone seems to be reacting negatively. Why is that?”

“Well, our factory doesn’t have a Block B. And since it’s a pudding factory, we also don’t have a milling machine.”

“Oh, now that you mention it, a milling machine is a machine for cutting metal, right? So that means we can conclude that it’s an impersonator.”

“Or the object is trying to lure people.”

The factory employee seemed a bit frightened, perhaps due to the thought of the object trying to invoke fear.

Then suddenly, the phone rang again.

“Huh? The boss is calling again.”

All the chatter subsided as everyone fell silent.

As the commotion quieted, only the sound of the phone rang loudly.