The Love Doll Locked-Room Murder That Summons the Storm (5)
S-man hurried to the end of the second-floor west corridor where Room 201 was located in the lodging house. Facilities like this, tucked away in the middle of a mountain, usually skipped finicky electronic door locks in favor of old-school keys to open and close the rooms. Naturally, if you had a spare key from the front desk or a master key, you could slip right in—and most folks who stumbled into a room during a drinking game didn't bother locking the door anyway. Sure enough, the door swung open without resistance, revealing half-empty bottles of soju scattered around with snacks rolling on the floor.
That alone might've let him conclude the occupants of Room 201 had vanished for some reason. But S-man's instincts told him something was still inside. The drinking area was empty, no signs of life from the bathroom, yet the room felt oppressively full in a bizarre way. He stepped carefully over the threshold, passed the predictably vacant bathroom, rounded the corner, and peered into the back.
Two single beds sat side by side. Someone's on the beds. The bulging blankets clearly indicated bodies lying there. Had the two guys staying in 201 just conked out mid-drink from exhaustion? After hours suffering in the cold outside, a few shots inside could've knocked them out cold with the sudden wave of fatigue. Plausible enough.
But the figures under those blankets didn't look like they were sleeping. People usually shower before bed, change clothes, turn off the lights, and sprawl out comfortably. If they were that wiped, they'd crash anywhere without a care. Yet these beds looked like morgue slabs, sheets pulled right over the heads in perfect stillness. Lying straight as boards? Fine. Sleeping with the lights on? Sure. Passing out mid-party without cleanup? Happens. But no one sleeps like this.
It wasn't some weird prejudice—the act of burying yourself under a blanket up to your head was the opposite of restful. Thick fabric choked your breathing, swapped comfort for stuffiness, left you psychologically on edge. Even folks in sleeping bags poke their faces out for a reason.
Instead of approaching rashly, S-man picked up one of the bottles the middle-aged guys had been downing and sniffed it. The fishy, sharp tang of soju was gone, replaced by something else. ...Sulfur? The piercing, acrid stench hit hard, so he dumped the contents into a paper cup. What poured from the green bottle wasn't clear liquor but a dark red like wine. Same with the next bottle, and the next. Frowning at another fishy whiff from the snacks, he took a closer look.
Nothing fancy—peanuts, dried squid, fish jerky, a bag of shrimp crackers, probably grabbed from a convenience store down the mountain. A drinking vet like S-man would've shrugged off the smell, but this reek rising from the floor was the kind that numbed your nose, inhuman and overwhelming. Snacks like that, booze like that? No way.
This is just staged to look like a drinking party. Proof: bottles half-empty, but no paper cups used. Snacks nibbled but barely touched—enough for two grown men to demolish with a few bottles, yet pristine. And no crumbs or spills anywhere. Even careful ramen slurping stains a white shirt; a real bender should've left the place messier.
Time to answer the why. Why stage a fake party? Why vanish the two guys from here, leaving blanket-shrouded lumps on the beds? Why drip red liquid from the first-floor lounge ceiling? That line of thought yanked up Han Daeri's prickly attitude at the communal dining hall. Why show us this?
Because it needed to be seen. Why? To create dissonance. And if you can't resolve it...? It registers as supernatural. S-man slowly raised his eyes to the beds. The two blanket-wrapped shapes had sat up side by side, facing him. Still covered head to toe, impossible to tell what—or if—they were really watching. But the wrongness hit like a gut punch. Acknowledging that wrongness meant admitting the situation was abnormal, irrational, illogical.
How to fix the dissonance? Escape the trap? Hide my existence. The room was already a supernatural stage. He was an ant in an antlion pit. No easy outs. So make them not see him as human prey.
Yonghwa Seonnyeo warned never to remove these talismans... but promises are made to be broken! S-man ripped the stickers off his body. A massive surge of yin energy exploded from within, flooding everywhere. It erased "male S-man" from existence, cloaking the room as empty of prey. The blankets slumped flat—no more bulges. The choking sulfur and fish reek vanished; the room snapped back to "normal."
The floor and beds were slick with blood, gleaming under the lights. The supernatural event in 201 reverted unobserved. Meaning anyone stepping in would trigger it anew.
Gotta tell the boss quick. As S-man cautiously opened the door, every light in the corridor died.
"Wh-where'd all the bodies go?!"
"How the hell should I know? Maybe they grew legs and walked off."
Pretty damn plausible, considering the corpses did have legs. Sherlock Holmes would've yelled, "Supernatural Phenomena Office: 10/10!"
Not that it paid or felt rewarding—this crap sounded like a pain in the ass. My anger issues were already stirring at the thought of getting dragged into it. I'd come to this campsite for some goddamn healing, only to get snagged by a clichéd plot straight out of a third-rate mystery novel. Clichés get hate because they regurgitate the obvious like a cuckoo bird. Next up? Another death. Or someone freaking out about what they "saw." Or a body in some unexpected spot to stir endless panic.
This bullshit was straight-up challenging my perfect crowd control. Pissed me off. In a word: gross.
Not sacrifices, then. I brushed past the shivering employee and eyed the neatly arranged corpse chunks from the two men on the table. No missing parts. Puzzle 'em perfect, and you'd have two full bodies. The key wasn't how they got butchered, but why Room 201's guests.
To taunt us resting in the lounge below? Or warn everyone in the lodge? This feels like a psycho killer turning murder into art. A mere spirit wouldn't bother with the hassle. Even if it could.
It wanted me to assign meaning. It's the event host; I'm the player. That realization hit just as the corridor and dining hall lights winked out. Like the real show was starting, every door and window in the building clicked locked on their own.