Chapter 11
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 11
Chapter Title: Hollow Man 2
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Ibi lay there blankly staring up at the ceiling. The dream she'd just had was already starting to blur, but those two burning eyes remained vivid.
Ibi clutched her head and dragged herself upright.
"Fuck..."
She spat out the curse just to try grasping onto some sense of reality somehow. It wasn't easy. What she was going through felt worlds away from anything real.
Still, she managed to stagger back onto her feet. Leaning against the wall, she slowly made her way out of the room again.
The endless corridor stretched on. That godforsaken corridor. At its end, Ibi opened a door. What appeared was a rectangular room. The newspaper dates were the 25th and 26th. Another room she'd never seen before.
Ibi moved to the next room. This one had the 13th and 14th.
The next was the 1st and 2nd. For a split second, she thought she'd finally looped back to the very first room and even cried out. But a quick check of the articles showed they were all new.
"Ha..."
She slammed both hands against the wall and banged her forehead against it. The man had clearly said this place wasn't infinite. But no matter how far she walked, she never encountered the same room twice. Even trying to remember and retrace her steps was impossible.
Ibi pulled out her smartphone and called the man.
"Hello."
Hearing his calm voice made her blood boil. The trust she'd felt toward him earlier had vanished. She snapped right away.
"You were wrong."
"Oh... it's you. Wrong about what? What did I say?"
"......"
She blanked for a moment but held back with superhuman patience.
"You said the rooms here couldn't be infinite. But no matter how much I wander, I never see the same room! It might not be truly infinite, but it's insanely huge! And what was that about time and space earlier? That part seems right. Even going back the way I came leads to different rooms! This isn't a place you can just stumble out of by wandering blindly! Do something. You said you'd save me!"
The man replied in a subdued voice.
"That can't be. Hmm, maybe try thinking differently. Like you're going in circles?"
That was the most absurd thing she'd heard.
"Ha, you think I can't recognize a place I've been to even once?"
"Didn't you say all the rooms look identical? What makes you so sure?"
"The newspapers! I even took photos to compare the articles, and none match! You don't think that guest ghost is personally editing the papers, do you? And there aren't any other traces left in the rooms either!"
"......"
The man fell silent for a long time. Just as she was about to complain about it, his voice finally came through.
"Miss, your name's Kang Ibi, right?"
"Yes? Why bring that up all of a sudden..."
It struck her as random, but then she realized they hadn't even exchanged names yet. The thought made her suddenly flustered. How did he know her name?
"How did you know that?"
"I've got my ways. Hold on. Can you call me back in a bit? Sounds like the music's winding down."
He was right. Ibi's gut burned, but escaping took priority. This was the 1st and 2nd room, so the guest would come from the east.
She pocketed the phone and glanced at the east door. But suddenly, something surged up from her chest. Why did she have to go through this? She hadn't done anything wrong.
The music ended, and the knocking began echoing from all four sides.
Knock, knock, knock. It's the guest. Knock, knock, knock, it's the guest.
Ibi clenched her fists. I'm innocent. How long do I have to keep running? From something like this?
"Get lost!"
Ibi screamed at the door in a fit of rage. Maybe she was losing her mind. Of course she was. Who wouldn't in a space like this, trapped with their life on the line?
"Guest? Who's calling themselves a guest! I never invited some bitch like you! What the hell do you think you're doing to an innocent person! Cut this bullshit out. Cut it out! Just fuck off and die!"
Knock.
The knocking stopped. Ibi took a step back. Her evaporated reason seemed to creep back a beat too late. What have I just done?
But what happened next was even more shocking. A eerie voice slowly seeped in from beyond the door.
"...Guess this isn't the one."
And the door didn't open. The sound of something slithering across the floor faded into the distance.
Eh?
Ibi stood there dumbfounded. Had it really left?
She couldn't make sense of it. Was it really that easy? What about all the deadly chasing up till now?
It baffled her so much that she even walked up to the very door the guest had been knocking on. She even grabbed the handle and tried to turn it.
"What?"
The handle wouldn't budge. The door was locked. No matter how she pushed or pulled, it stayed shut.
That alone was disorienting enough, but then other things started happening one after another.
"...Huh?"
Ibi could only keep blurting out in shock. The newspapers on the wall suddenly peeled off on their own and fluttered down to the floor. When she approached to look closer, they turned to dust and scattered.
"What is this? What's going on?"
Panicking, Ibi quickly grabbed another door handle and turned it. Thankfully, it wasn't locked. Though she wasn't sure if she could relax over something like that.
She hurried down the corridor. The next room was triangular. Ibi checked the calendar on the wall.
29th. 'Sun'.
30th. 'Hwan'.
And like the newspapers in every room before, they peeled off the wall and scattered into dust.
The sudden chain of events made Ibi's head spin. And then, a possibility flashed through her mind. If she'd realized it sooner, it would've been a revelation. But now, it only brought endless despair.
"No, no, no, no."
Muttering like a madwoman, Ibi left the room. The next rectangular room had no newspaper on the wall at all—it had already fallen off.
Ibi stared at the carpet on the floor. Her heart pounded wildly. Please no. Please let me be wrong.
She reached under the carpet and flipped it over.
It flipped with a flap, and Ibi collapsed onto the spot.
Dried blood stained the underside of the carpet—from the blood she'd spilled earlier. Enough to soak the whole thing.
And the back side looked exactly like the front. Right down to the directional markers drawn on it.
When she'd visited this room for the second time, she'd assumed it was a brand-new room because the blood scattered on the carpet had vanished. But that was an illusion.
The carpet had simply been flipped over. By the guest? To fool her?
There was no way to know now. The only certain thing was that the newspaper dates and articles had been a trap.
And the truth they pointed to was clear: Ibi had been circling the same room all along.
That doesn't make sense? There are four doors. Logically, in a setup like this, you couldn't loop the same spot forever.
"Wait."
Ibi jerked her head up. No. There weren't four doors. The one the guest came through was always as good as locked. In reality, she only ever had three choices.
With that realization, Ibi glanced around. The bloodstained carpet meant this was the 5th and 6th room. She bolted to the west door like a coiled spring and grabbed it.
It was locked.
Ibi shook her head and kept backing away. A certain idea kept swirling in her mind. It was almost there, but not quite.
Then she felt the phone in her pocket. That's right—she remembered she hadn't finished the last call. With trembling hands, she dialed.
After a few rings, the man picked up.
"H-Hello."
"Your voice sounds half-dead after just a few days. What? Something happen?"
In the end, Ibi burst into tears.
"I... I don't know. But something's wrong. Right now, I can't make heads or tails of anything..."
The man calmly asked her to explain what happened. Ibi recounted everything since their last call ended—incoherently, her voice choked with sobs.
The man let out a deep sigh.
"I thought you were smart... You should've called me instead of messing around. I could've saved you then."
"Wh-what do you mean?"
He could've saved her... which meant he couldn't now, right?
But the man stayed quiet for a long stretch.
"Kang Ibi, 22 years old, aspiring musical actress, college on leave. Right?"
"How do you..."
"I've got my ways."
And his next words made Ibi's eyes go wide.
"When someone's missing for seven months, digging up that much info is child's play."
"I don't understand. Who's been missing for seven months? I've only been in here a few hours!"
"Sorry, but that's not true. Kang Ibi, you've been missing for seven months."
"What..."
"And the wardrobe you're trapped in? I actually acquired it seven months ago. I'd love to smash it open to get you out, but that brute-force approach could make things way worse, so I've been observing it instead."
"Cut the crap and explain properly!"
Ibi's voice trembled as she said it. Maybe she didn't even want to hear the answer.
"Those dates on the newspapers—they weren't for show."
Ibi's mouth fell open. The words made a twisted kind of sense, yet no sense at all.
"Every time you moved between rooms... real time passed. Exactly as many days as those dates indicated."