Arcadia Chapter 1.1

In the December winter of an unprecedented cold snap, Michel disappeared.

The grass buried in the snow drooped, its neck broken. The house, left long ago and visited perhaps once every three years, was as unfamiliar as ever. With each step forward, crude footprints were stamped onto the white snowfield.

He hadn’t been able to contact Michel for four months. Since they weren’t the type to share every trivial detail of their lives, he hadn’t noticed anything strange until two months had passed without a word.

A flood of work that had been pushed off until the end of his contract came rushing in, and he was so busy rolling around under the hot sun that he hadn’t even realized winter had arrived here. In the end, taking advantage of a vacation, Van belatedly arrived in his hometown and headed for the entrance of a house that seemed to have been uninhabited for a long time, covered in a hand’s breadth of snow.

Melted snow slowly seeped into his ankle-high work boots. Not used to the cold, he quickly rang the bell, but even after waiting for a long time, there was no answer. When he knocked on the front door, the old door rattled and shook as if it would break. It looked like a single kick could shatter the lock as well. Frowning in contemplation, Van suddenly remembered the hiding place for the key.

Recalling a habit of Michel’s that hadn’t changed in nearly 30 years, Van turned his head to look for the flowerpot under the eaves. The tall Hope Selloum was dying, its few leaves withered and blackened. When he knelt and felt the ground beneath the pot, a small key caught on his fingers. To think he still hadn’t even changed the place he kept the key. Michel could be stubborn in the oddest ways.

“…Still the same.”

He held the icily cold key in his palm for a moment before fitting it into the keyhole. The moment he twisted his wrist slightly, the lock gave way with almost anticlimactic ease. Brushing the snow from his shoulders and head, he stepped inside the house, but there was no warmth. Instead, the air, cooler than outside, pierced through his thick outerwear, making his shoulders hunch instinctively. Dropping the bag that was as big as his torso at the entrance, Van wiped his snow-dampened forearm and started walking.

Michel only came home very occasionally, usually eating and sleeping at his research lab. Like most homes where an old man lived alone, it was tidy but felt somewhat cluttered. He draped a cardigan that had been carelessly discarded on the floor over the sofa and headed to the kitchen. The sink was bone dry without a trace of moisture. The dishes were also neatly arranged in their proper places, making it seem as if he had gone on a long outing.

Then where did Michel disappear to? To where, for four months, without a single word to his only family member.

He swept a hand over his cheek, dry from the long flight. His body, crammed into a narrow seat, felt stiff. Returning to the living room, Van collapsed onto the sofa and scrubbed at his exhausted face. A sigh escaped him.

“Where the hell did this guy go…”

The moment he realized the customary calls had stopped, he had dug through his address book and called Michel’s lab dozens of times, but he never got through once. It was as if they had all vanished into thin air. Comforting himself with the thought that he had probably gone on a trip with the lab staff had its limits at two months. Should he report it to the police? He buried his face in his hands and thought for a long time. My grandmother’s been out of touch for four months. The place where he worked isn’t answering the phone either. Like that?

He shot up and paced around the living room before coming to a conclusion. Let’s not be rash and just wait one more day. If he searched the house, something was bound to turn up. A plane ticket, or a train ticket. In the worst case, even a will. The last thought seemed too extreme, so he forced it out of his mind.

He worried he might have to wash with cold water if the pipes were frozen, but thankfully, hot water came out. After taking a shower to wake himself up, Van toweled his wet hair and stepped onto the stairs leading to the second floor.

He sat down on the bed in the room, which was plastered with posters of movies that had been popular long ago. He let out a short sigh and looked around the room. It had seemed so spacious when he was young, but now it felt beyond cozy, so cramped it was suffocating. His hand, with nowhere to go, swept across the bed. The cold blanket rustled and crumpled beneath his palm.

“……”

Suddenly sensing a strange feeling of unease, he turned his gaze to the blanket. Because he rarely came home, Michel always kept the blanket on this bed put away. But he had laid out the blanket when he hadn’t even been given any notice of a visit? Getting up from the bed, he lifted the blanket, but all he saw was a mattress sheet pulled taut and secured. He slowly swept his palm over the dark blue sheet. Finally, Van slid his hand under the pillow and detected a subtle difference.

He quickly knelt on the floor, tossed the pillow aside, and slipped his hand under the mattress sheet. The edge of a piece of paper touched his fingertips. Carefully pulling it out so as not to crumple it, a commonplace envelope slid out from under the sheet. Having obtained a letter he had no memory of putting there himself, Van felt like he was breaking out in a cold sweat. No way. Come on, no way.

He chewed on his lip before reaching the conclusion that there was no way Michel would hide a will like this. Michel was not the kind of person deranged enough to play such a prank with a will. Pushing away the futile delusion, Van, after some hesitation, tore open the sealed flap of the envelope.

Inside the envelope was a letter of just two pages, folded in three. He hurriedly unfolded the paper, and a familiar handwriting came into view.

To Van. I find myself hoping you discover this letter, and at the same time, hoping you don’t. If you are reading this now, it must be after I have disappeared and you have returned to this house. The reason I’m writing this letter is because I have a favor to ask you. It is a very important matter, and it must be carried out in top secret. It is very different from the work you do, beating people up for money. I don’t know how your company operates, but if you’ve seen this letter, take my request as a priority. I’ll pay you enough so you won’t be short on money.

His brow furrowed relentlessly. Pulling his head back from where it was pressed close to the letter, Van glanced at the movie poster on the wall. The tone of this letter was similar to that of the spy thriller, with the spy dressed in a suit and holding a gun.

“Has he gone senile…”

Or perhaps a recent movie had made a deep impression on him.

Look under the mattress.

He didn’t want to play along, but what choice did he have? Letting out an irritated sigh, Van stripped off the sheet and felt the mattress. He had probably torn a hole somewhere inside and put something in there. It was obvious.

As he stood the mattress halfway up, the blanket and pillow fell to the floor. While he was rummaging through the heavy mattress, the thought that the old man was surprisingly strong started to creep into his mind. His fingers caught on something near the head of the mattress. When he inserted his index finger into the torn opening, he felt a hard object. The object was larger than he’d expected and was wedged tightly in the gap, making it extremely difficult to remove.

“How did he even get this in here…”

After a struggle, he managed to get his hands on a long, thin wooden box. He placed the box on the bed, and when he opened the lid, he felt a slight resistance before it flipped all the way back with a snap.

Inside the box were a small remote control and an old-fashioned mobile phone. He turned over the flip phone, whose design was so plain it made him wonder if they even made this model anymore, and then powered it on. While waiting for the screen to light up, he read the next page of the letter.

Try the remote in the living room. Keep the phone with you at all times.

The more he read, the more baffling it became. Van, who had never been close enough to his grandmother to play these kinds of pranks, rubbed his furrowed brow and then got up and headed to the living room. The man who had never done anything like this before was making him do something pointless, and despite his annoyance, he couldn’t help but feel a little curious.

Arriving in the living room, Van immediately flipped the switch on the remote. He expected the lights to go out or something, but there was no change in the quiet living room. He extended his arm and walked around the living room, clicking the switch on and off, but nothing changed.

Is this even working? He was pouting and looking down at the remote when the sound of wood grain rubbing against itself and scraping the floor pierced his ears. Turning his head toward the source of the faint sound, Van witnessed a bizarre phenomenon.

A waist-high cabinet was sliding silently. Regardless of Van’s shock, the cabinet, fixed at one point, moved out until it was perpendicular to the wall and then stopped.

Van approached with hesitant steps and looked down at the floor. A square hole was gaping open beneath the displaced cabinet. It was strange. No matter how much he searched his memory, there was no basement in this house. A suspicious atmosphere billowed up from within the hole, which was large enough for one person to pass through.

After pacing around the hole and pondering for a long time, Van tousled his hair haphazardly and came back with a flashlight. Michel’s letter had ended with the instruction to use the remote, so his real purpose must lie down there. He switched on the flashlight and shone it below, revealing the faint outline of a ladder leading down to a basement.

“I really don’t want to go in…”

Van clicked his tongue, bit down on the flashlight’s handle, and placed his foot on the ladder. If he was going to make a basement of unknown purpose, he could have at least built a staircase; this flimsy ladder groaned and creaked with every movement, making Van uneasy.

He carefully descended, and when he was about halfway down, he heard a sound similar to the hum of a refrigerator. Just as his jaw began to ache from holding the flashlight, his feet touched the floor. He moved the flashlight to his hand and shone it around, spotting a switch on the wall.

He quickly flipped the switch, and lights came on sequentially from the ceiling nearest to him, instantly banishing the darkness. He squeezed his eyes shut against the cold light, then opened them. Finally facing the basement, Van burst into a laugh that welled up from deep within his lungs.

“Well, I’ll be damned…”

His eyes, filled with disbelief, roamed in every direction. He built a place like this? Under the house, he built this kind of… crappy secret room that looks like it’s straight out of an 80s movie…. The crappy smell from this crappy space stung his nose.

This was not on the level of something built for fun. The hypothesis that he had been duped by a cult in his old age and built a bunker was more plausible. Laughing hollowly, Van flipped the phone open and closed with his thumb as he looked around the basement.

A huge glass wall, wider than his outstretched arms, divided the basement space in half. Wires dangling from six monitors were connected to the inside of the glass wall, which vaguely resembled a laboratory.

As if living at the lab wasn’t enough, he had to go and build one at home too. Michel’s obsession was enough to give him goosebumps. He couldn’t even begin to guess what he was researching that required digging out a basement. His laughter having dried up, Van looked down at the old-fashioned phone. It seemed this really wasn’t a prank.

A sense of unease scattered his thoughts. He slowly approached the glass wall, fiddling with the powered-on phone, but there were no contacts or photos saved. Unable to make heads or tails of anything, Van wiped his face and pulled over a chair placed in front of the glass wall to sit down. A transparent acrylic box was attached to the glass wall. Inside the box, which was about three hands wide, a lab bench at eye level came into view.

On the lab bench sat a single glass petri dish. He peered at the dish through a microscope attached to the glass wall, but to Van, who was ignorant of science, there was no way of knowing what the cluster of tiny specks was.

His lips pulled down in a frown, he took his eye from the microscope and saw a letter taped to one of the monitor screens. He reached out and peeled off the letter, revealing the screen it had been covering. A blinking number, ‘—200℃’, indicated the temperature.

Since you’ve come this far, I’ll tell you the details of the request. An advance of one hundred thousand dollars. It’s under the desk. Upon completion of the request, I will pay you ten times the advance.

…One hundred thousand? Van thought he had misread and brought the letter right up to his nose. He checked several times, and it was indeed one hundred thousand. And ten times that. It was an amount he could never dream of receiving at his company, where he had to bow and scrape just to be employed.

The contract period is 1 year. Someone will come to you exactly one year from the time you turn on the phone. You just have to hand over that petri dish then. It’s top secret, of course, and you must do this all by yourself.

His mind blown by the payment amount, Van read the next sentence belatedly. At the same time, an unsettling feeling crept up the back of his neck.

And don’t touch anything.

What was he not supposed to touch? As Van made a questioning face, a faint beeping sound flowed into his ears. Beep, beep. His head creaked as it turned toward the direction of the eerie sound. The number displayed on the monitor closest to the transparent box was shooting up with every blink of an eye. —100, —50. 0. The number, which had definitely been –200℃, settled at 3℃ while he stared blankly.

Well, something a bit more plausible….

“…I didn’t touch anything, though?”

Operation Name: Arcadia. The person who comes to you later will say this word. Your mission is to protect ‘it’ without letting anyone take it. Now. Go earn your pay.

As he distractedly picked at the joints of his cold fingers, Van’s gaze remained glued to the other side of the glass wall. His heart had dropped through the soles of his feet, hit the floor, and come back up, after which he had frantically hammered at the red button and the monitors, but he couldn’t find a way to reverse it. In truth, he couldn’t even properly read the values displayed on the monitors.

“Ah, a million…. Why is this…”

His half-dazed forehead thumped against the glass. Both his hands were still hovering in the air. He swore he hadn’t touched anything. Van rolled his eyes and began to rationalize. It must have an automatic temperature control function. Otherwise, there was no way he could have messed up right from the start. Shoving aside the uneasy feeling, the most important thing popped into Van’s mind.

Money.

He quickly reread the letter and headed for the desk where the advance was supposed to be. Bending down to look under the wide desk, he saw a row of blue boxes. He pulled away the cloth that carefully covered the boxes and looked inside, and his eyes went wide.

“Whoa, shit. Whoa…”

Faced with boxes packed neatly with crisp cash, what came out was shock and awe, and what followed was anxiety. He had vaguely imagined he would shout for joy upon receiving a hundred thousand in cash all at once, but he felt strangely calm.

In this line of work, most deals were shady, so cash transactions were the norm, but where did Michel, a mere government agency researcher, get such a large sum of money? If the research was important enough for the state to just hand over cash, it was only natural to be scared first.

Although Van had a relatively normal and ordinary way of thinking, he was the type of person who went crazy for money. He shot up from his spot, paced around the basement in circles, and then crouched down in front of the desk again.

He swallowed hard and picked up a stack of bills. He took out a single crisp bill and tossed the rest back into the box. He stretched out his arm, holding the 100-dollar bill up to the light to check if it was counterfeit, when a strange sensation sharply pricked the back of his head. It was neither a sound nor a scent. His gaze, following the source of the peculiar sensation, landed on the transparent glass wall.

Even as he approached the source of the strange sensation, Van couldn’t shake the nagging suspicion that this was all an elaborate prank by a senile Michel. However, the moment he faced the lab bench through the single pane of glass, the bill in his hand crumpled with a rustle. In the petri dish, which had seemed so small and empty when he first saw it, something had appeared.

“Huh?”

He hurriedly bent down, bringing his face close to the wall, and the shape became clearer. The shape was a very thin, transparent tentacle. From the center of the petri dish, countless tentacles, too many to count one by one, swayed as they expanded their territory. Van stared blankly at the mass, which was smaller than his fingernail, before fumbling to put his eye to the microscope lens.

In the narrow field of view, the something inside the petri dish repeatedly broke down, clumped together, and expanded. He had no clue what on earth it was, but from its undulating form without a cell wall, he could be certain of two things: that it was an animal, and that something was very, very wrong. With his eye pressed against the lens, looking into the petri dish, Van mouthed a curse.

“…Dammit.”