Room 102 — Mansion of Terror (10) FIN

— Kim Ari

Creeeeak!

I pushed open the mansion’s front doors and stepped inside.

Ugh. I really hadn’t wanted to come back here. Playing pretend maid in this exhausting house had been pure boredom.

Still… it was almost over now. Half a step short of escape. Only one thing left—and of course it had to be the most agonizing job of the lot.

A moment ago, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Gain had drawn the “old man’s” attention and left.

Walking through the empty mansion, I thought back on what had happened a few hours earlier.

“Stop it… just stop. What the hell is wrong with those eyes?”

“You couldn’t make up your mind, so I was trying to ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠help. But you’re stubborn. If you’d just accepted it, we’d both be done and comfortable.”

“I have a better plan!”

A better plan.

Compared to the one-hundred-percent-certain escape method of “kill yourself immediately,” it carried its own risks, but…

The truth was, you couldn’t survive this hotel by only doing safe things. If there was something worth gaining, taking a risk was, in the long run, the safer move.

That was why I’d been persuaded by his plan.

This was the first time I’d been alone in the mansion since we entered.

It really was enormous. Maybe it felt worse because I was in a child’s body. I kept walking and, almost without thinking, found myself at the old man’s study.

This was the place, wasn’t it?

My memory wasn’t clear.

According to the “injected personality” the hotel had forced on me, the priest’s granddaughter had once come here to persuade the old man—and whatever he had shown her shattered her mind and body.

Then came the priest’s surrender. In exchange, the old man restored the girl…

And in the process of that restoration, her memory of whatever she had seen was blurred. Crushing that memory had been the restoration itself.

“I’m not saying we shouldn’t die. I’m saying we should do a little more first, then die.”

“There’s something else you want to do?”

“When we left Room 101 and I saw that message, I half-suspected… but after the card game with you the other day, I was sure.

Escape isn’t the end of a Cursed Room. It’s just a means.

Somehow get even one person out, keep trying again and again, explore the Cursed Room, and eventually erase the source of the curse itself, right?

So even if we die when we die—we have to learn a little something before we go.”

I had decided to go and die what might be the most horrible death in the world.

I stepped into the study. Papers lay scattered in chaotic heaps.

Where was it? The memory was foggy. Around here, maybe? I lifted a painting on the wall and found a lever. Subtle classical touch for a place like this.

I pulled it. As if it were the most natural thing in the world, the bookshelf rotated and a wooden door appeared.

Beyond it, stairs. So many stairs the bottom vanished from sight.

Not even a single light.

I was supposed to go down there.

I’d seen every horror the world had to offer, countless times. But no matter how often you experience it, something like this never becomes familiar.

Stairs. I descended and descended without end. The bottom of hell.

The air rising from even farther below felt as if it were corroding every corner of my lungs.

How long had I been going down?

It felt like a full hour, but who could say. In a place like this, your sense of time blurs.

At the foot of the stairs, a bluish glow appeared for the first time. Beneath that glow sat a rusted iron door on the verge of collapse.

I forced it open and stepped through—and there was a book, glowing with that same pale blue light.

I knew the moment I saw it. That was it.

Probably the final reward of this room.

The instant I touched it, I would learn something—and die horribly. But I couldn’t turn around and climb back up now. No choice left.

The book’s appearance was ordinary. A black cover of some unidentifiable leather.

Unreadable characters carved into its surface.

I opened it.

Darkness—crashed over me.

I fell without end.

A hole with no floor. Eternal free fall.

A place you could fall for ten million years and never reach the bottom.

Just as there is no north beyond the North Pole and every direction is south—

Here there was no beginning and no end, no distinction between up and down.

Every direction was simply “down.”

There was no light source, yet somehow I could see the shapes on the walls.

Black, red, writhing walls. Abominations like living entrails.

I was nothing but a single worm falling between the guts of some vast creature.

For reasons I could not understand, the fall stopped in midair.

Something was visible in the distance.

How far? I didn’t know. It looked impossibly distant, yet I could make out its form.

Maybe it was closer than I thought. Or maybe it was simply too enormous. Impossible to tell.

A writhing shape. Like a worm crawling endlessly up an outer wall without a moment’s pause.

Every time an arm touched the wall, the arm melted away—and a new arm endlessly sprouted in its place.

Ah. It was exactly like watching a parasite crawl through someone’s intestines.

The sensation of hundreds of millions of worms filling my belly and climbing. Disgust boiled up from my guts.

I forced myself to think of something else.

The mansion—no, most of this hotel—was fake.

The mansion, the mountain, the river: everything was nothing more than a stage ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the hotel had molded like clay.

But even in a film, the actors on the stage are real.

There were “real things” in the hotel.

Why had the hotel been made?

Someone had said it was a process for selecting heroes through ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠trials.

Someone else had said it was a process for giving great treasures to those who deserved them.

Maybe the hotel was a breeding pen.

A hell that forever imprisoned monsters too dangerous to release into the world outside, and periodically scattered people as feed to keep them managed.

The crawling shape’s gaze turned toward me.

Had it always had eyes? A place like this shouldn’t need them—had it grown them just for this?

The “old man” had worshipped something like that as a god.

It was almost funny.

To an ant, even a chicken would look like a god. But once it ends up in a human’s hands, it’s just a side dish for one meal.

No matter how impressive, in the end it was nothing but a shabby abomination trapped in the guts of something even more remote and vast.

I felt everything in my vision beginning to collapse.

This was it. The real limit had arrived.

The moment I forced my gaze upward, something that had risen from the “entrails” came toward me.

Making me do something this horrific and calling it a “better plan”…

The second I get out of here, I’m going to punch him properly.

The long night in the mansion was over.

— Han Gain

A dizzying sensation washed over me as I pushed myself up from the floor. Just like when I left Room 101, it felt as if I’d been flung out through a doorway, blacked out, and only now come to my senses.

I looked around. Seven people were floundering much the same way I was.

Elena. Cha Jinchul. Lee Eunsol. Yu Song-i. Park Seungyeop. And the two people with whom I now had a great deal to discuss.

Scenes of people dying wretchedly in the hotel flashed through my mind. My heart pounded hard against my ribs without my meaning it to, and a thick, choking feeling rose in my throat.

Elena, strangled to death. Noona Eunsol, impaled on a spike. Hyung Jinchul, dead from poison. Me, dead by my own dagger. How had Seungyeop died again?

But I shoved those horrible recollections aside.

This moment. Exactly this moment.

How long had I pictured us walking out of a room and meeting again with smiles on our faces…

Tonight’s meal at the hotel was probably going to turn into a flood of tears. I could already feel my own eyes growing hot and wet.

And one curiosity had been answered, at least.

Even if everyone died at different times inside a Cursed Room, we all came out together.

Of course, this was only the beginning. There were far too many questions we still had to settle with each other.

Setting aside the secrets the hotel itself held—didn’t we know far too little about one another as well?

I was cataloging, one by one, the points we would have to carefully uncover when someone approached.

A familiar figure I had looked at for days inside the mansion. Even the appearance was roughly the same as in the house.

“You’re awake? So your name is still… I mean—”

A spicy fist flew at me without mercy. I hit the floor all over again.