There's Space Behind the Pillar #4
We held our breath like mice hiding from a snake. We kept our mouths shut tight so not a single sound escaped. About five minutes passed like that.
Click, clack. Click, click, click. The sound of unnaturally cracking joints and high heels faded into the dark corner. Still, no one moved much or spoke easily.
"I think it's gone." I spoke up to lighten the mood and help everyone snap back to their senses. Jeong Seok carefully exhaled the breath he'd been holding and opened his mouth.
"What the hell was that just now? It was too dark to see clearly. Wasn't there something pale moving around? What would've happened if we hadn't hidden in this trash can?"
"No idea. Probably wouldn't have ended well." I replied, feigning calm, and peered through the slightly open lid of the trash can. It was pitch black and hard to see anything. This was when the bag came in handy. I unzipped the bag slung over my shoulder, but the inside of the trash can was so dark that finding anything was a hassle.
"Yang Ju-hui. You have a lighter, right?"
Thugs like her always carried lighters, regardless of gender. Especially since I knew Yang Ju-hui smoked.
"Yeah."
"Light it up."
Click, whoosh-. The Zippo lighter Yang Ju-hui carried lit up the cramped space inside the trash can. A flame could be incredibly comforting. Of course, everyone's faces illuminated by the lighter flame were stiff with tension.
"Yeong-won, look at this talisman."
While their attention was on the talisman, I pulled out a flashlight from my bag using the lighter's glow.
"This should help us move around."
Ever since we'd opened the corridor and fought various ghosts, I'd always kept a flashlight in my bag. Just in case. And now was that moment.
Click, click-. While checking if the flashlight worked, someone grabbed my arm.
"You want to leave already? How about we stay hidden a bit longer and watch the situation? I don't know if it's because of these talismans, but that ghost-like thing earlier didn't seem to know we were hiding here."
Jeong Seok suggested staying hidden in the safety of the trash can. It was an extremely sensible, typical Jeong Seok plan. But if my thoughts and predictions were correct... we probably couldn't stay hidden in this trash can for long. And as if to prove my hypothesis, something happened.
"Ugh. What is this smell. Did someone shit their pants?"
Yang Ju-hui was in obvious agony. Soon Jeong Seok also started gagging. "Ugh, ugh." A terribly disgusting stench was coming from inside the trash can. An awful odor so bad it stung the eyes even while holding your breath. It was as if it carried some malice and was trying to drive us out of the trash can.
"Let's get out. Let's get out. Get out! I can't stand it! Uweeek!"
Jeong Seok, who had suggested watching the situation from inside the trash can, was the first to scramble out. Maybe because he'd grown up as a young master, he had the least tolerance for bad smells.
Second, Yang Ju-hui dashed out. "Ugh. Uuueek." She looked like she was about to throw up. The only one relatively fine was me. I'd anticipated this would happen and had mentally prepared, so I lasted longer. Plus, I had the 'Breath Holding' trait. A trait that let you hold your breath 1.5 times longer than usual, which wasn't very useful in daily life, but...
"......"
In this situation, it was relatively useful. If I could just endure the stinging eyes, I might be able to last a bit longer in this stench of the safe zone.
"Puhaa!"
Of course, there was a limit to my lung capacity, and I too had no choice but to burst out of the trash can. Soon Jeong Seok, who had been surveying the surroundings in the dark corner, asked me.
"What the hell is going on? Ha Yeong-won. Do you know what this is right now? I'm asking because you seem a bit calm. If you know anything, explain it all."
Jeong Seok's deduction was sharp even in this situation. I was someone who could be called experienced in this dark space. But since I didn't know how much time we had, I decided to explain briefly.
"We need to find an exit and get out of here. But with monsters and ghosts like the one that just passed by, wandering around aimlessly won't be easy."
Even as I spoke, I kept an eye on our surroundings. I didn't know when the ghosts and monsters would come here. What bothered me was the ghost that had just passed by. It was a bit different from the ghosts I'd seen in the Nightmare Corridor.
"...It had no face." Yang Ju-hui said in a small voice. "That ghost earlier. It had no face. It had no head. It was wearing red high heels. Its skin was incredibly white. So white it was clearly visible even in the dark."
To observe the ghost's face in such an anxious moment. Yang Ju-hui's courage was truly remarkable. A faceless ghost. Soon Jeong Seok chimed in.
"A ghost without a head? Ha Yeong-won. Is that a ghost you've seen before?"
"No. It's my first time seeing it too. Anyway! What I want to say is that ghosts roam around in places like this. Still, there are places to hide like this trash can scattered around. Not for long, though."
Death floor. I thought it would be good to clearly set our goals for wandering this bizarre space.
"We need to find the exit here. And we need to find my mom too. Let's focus on these two things. But the most important thing is that we have to survive."
The Nightmare Corridor was a dream. It meant there was one chance even if you died. But this bizarre space wasn't a dream. If you die, everything ends. At least, I was certain of that.
At that moment, Jeong Seok picked up the cell phone he'd left on the floor.
"What are you doing? Why that?"
When I asked, Jeong Seok said, "Earlier there was definitely a terrible noise, but now it's quiet. And that high heel ghost we met earlier. It didn't seem interested in the sound this phone makes. Maybe because it has no head, it can't hear?"
Zzt, zzt-. At that moment, the cell phone Jeong Seok picked up started making that unpleasant noise again. Click. Click. And from around the corner, the sound of high heels hitting the floor was heard again.
"Let's hide for now! We have to hide!"
I grabbed the dazed-looking Jeong Seok and Yang Ju-hui and ran.
# # #
Thanks to my experience roaming the Nightmare Corridor or perhaps because I had a flashlight, I was able to find the room labeled "A-1" more easily than expected.
"Let's go inside for now!"
I didn't know what kind of room it was, but it seemed much better than wandering the hallway without a plan.
"Hide in here! Jeong Seok! What are you doing! Hurry up and hide!"
"Wait-. Okay. All done! I was trying to leave the phone in the hallway!"
Rattle-. When we opened the sliding door and went in, a dusty laboratory-like space appeared. Beakers and flasks were filled with red liquid, and grayish water was dripping from the rusty sink. Broken desks and chairs were cluttered, but they seemed like they could serve as good cover to hide behind.
Zzt, zzzzzzt-. Uwaaaaaah-. ...Mom, mom.... Mom....
From the hallway, unpleasant noises kept coming. It was the noise from the cell phone Jeong Seok had left in the hallway.
Creak, rattle, creak-. When the phone's noise reached its peak of unpleasantness, a strange shadow began to pass by beyond the glass window of the sliding door. Click. Click. Click.
We kept our mouths shut tight and held our breath, just like when we were hiding in the trash can earlier. Please. Please!
Just as I was desperately wishing in my heart-.
Rattle, thud-. The sound of the sliding door opening was heard.
"......!"
"...!"
"...!"
I was greatly flustered. In the Nightmare Corridor, when we'd hidden in "1-4" or the teachers' office, the ghosts hadn't been able to open those doors. But this wasn't a hallway, and this place wasn't a teachers' office or classroom. It meant there was a possibility that ghosts could open the door and come in.
What should we do? If we end up facing the ghost like this, what should we do?
While I was racking my brain as if my blood vessels were about to burst, Yang Ju-hui pulled her hand out of her inner pocket and gripped a utility knife. I didn't know why she carried something like that around, but the blade sliding out with a "srrrk-" looked quite menacing. I didn't know what Yang Ju-hui was planning to do with it, but-.
I prayed that such a thing wouldn't happen.
Was it because my prayer was answered? Rattle, thud-. The sound of the laboratory door of "A-1" closing was heard. Click. Click. Click. The strange presence also disappeared into the distance, and the bizarre and creepy noise from the cell phone in the hallway also became as quiet as a mouse.
"According to my guess...." Jeong Seok's voice broke the silence.
"According to my guess, it seems like the phone makes noise when those ghosts approach. Maybe they're reacting to some kind of wavelength or magnetic field the ghosts have."
"What do you mean?"
"Have you never heard of an EMF meter? There's a hypothesis that ghosts leave behind an unspecified electromagnetic field when they appear, and it's a device that measures that."
I didn't understand what he was saying. But I could understand the core of what Jeong Seok wanted to say. That the cell phone alerts us to the ghost's approach!
Swish-. Yang Ju-hui, who had put the utility knife back in her inner pocket, asked. "But what if the ghosts hear the sound coming from that phone? They might follow the phone sound and come after us instead."
"So I'd like to experiment a bit.... Honestly, I don't know."
Jeong Seok looked a bit troubled. It would be stranger to maintain composure in this situation. Yang Ju-hui also seemed unable to calm down easily.
Rattle, thud-. It looked like someone was opening and closing the drawers in this laboratory, searching for something.
"What are you doing?"
"I was wondering if there might be some useful weapon or something. It'd be more reassuring to have something in hand, you know."
Is that so. Now that I think about it, that made sense. However, contrary to our wishes, there were no items in the laboratory that could be used as weapons. If Jeong So-jin with the 'Attentiveness' trait had been here, would she have been helpful at a time like this?
...No. ...If she were here, she'd probably push me forward to save only herself when the ghost appeared.
Rather than assuming things that hadn't happened, I decided to do what I could right now. As if my efforts were bearing fruit, I found a strange item in the laboratory drawer.
"Oh..."
It was a rolled-up drawing paper. More precisely, it was a torn-out page from a sketchbook. When I unfolded it, a drawing made with crooked lines appeared. The skill looked like it was drawn by a preschooler, and the content of the drawing... looked exactly like a treasure chest.
"This box. Could it be this one?" Yang Ju-hui pointed with her hand at a box placed in the corner of the laboratory. It looked like a fairly heavy locker. It had a lock that opened with a password.
Jeong Seok said, "For a 4-digit password, there are 10 to the power of 4 possibilities, so roughly ten thousand."
Is this real? Do we have to fiddle with the lock ten thousand times here? I wondered if it was worth that much effort. If Kim Geon-ho had the 'Destroyer' trait... would this kind of trouble have been unnecessary?
While thinking that, I looked closely at the drawing paper with this strange box drawn on it. There was nothing particularly strange about it. Just in case, I looked at the back, and there were numbers written on it.
"...Hey. Jeong Seok. Try entering 1126 on the lock."
"One one two six. One one two six."
Jeong Seok entering the number. Click-. The lock opened.
We were able to open the box and found an item inside.
"Crayons and a sketchbook?"
I felt like I knew where the torn drawing paper page had come from. Yang Ju-hui reacted. "Oh, this is the Princess Sketchbook. I really wanted it when I was little. But I couldn't buy it in the end. It was discontinued ten years ago, and I really wanted it..."
'Princess Sketchbook'. On the cover of the sketchbook was a princess character that young girls would like, and there was something like a dark red stain on it. Below that stain, there was writing that looked like it was written with a marker.
"A-1 ───" It looked like a name was written, but the letters weren't visible because of the stain.
Thinking it wasn't a big deal, I opened the sketchbook and flipped through the pages. Then I saw a drawing of a tall building and many people gathered watching fireworks. There was also a description.
"Title: Fireworks"
"It was so fun!"
"This looks like the completion ceremony of the Oseong Electronics building. When I was 6 years old. Ten years ago. When my dad... was still a prosecutor." Jeong Seok seemed to recognize the event depicted in the drawing. A sketchbook discontinued ten years ago. Drawings depicting ten years ago. This sketchbook was something used roughly ten years ago.
While thinking that and absentmindedly flipping through the pages, I saw...
"...What the hell is this."
The drawings toward the back were horribly grotesque, as if representing the emotions of a child under extreme stress. Some pages were filled with bright red pupils, others were completely blackened, and some had illegible writing scribbled messily. However, the drawings became more organized as they went on. The remaining five pages were all drawings of a single object. It was a drawing of an elevator seen from outside.
"Title: Door"
"Let me out I want to go out I want to see mom I want to see mom"
...The elevator is the door? The exit door?
Suddenly reaching a certain thought, I recalled the advice from the status window again.
『Advice from 'Broken Clock': If there's an entrance, there's also an exit.』
If there's an entrance, there's an exit. But... sometimes they're not different but the same. That's why there's the word "entrance and exit."
"Guys. Let's go back to the elevator we came on for now. On the way, it'd be good to retrieve our phones too."
We left "A-1" and returned to the elevator we'd come from.
"This is the door?" Jeong Seok frowned. Soon, Yang Ju-hui pointed with her finger as if she'd discovered something. "Look at this. Doesn't it look like someone marked it with a crayon? On the elevator door side."
Where Yang Ju-hui was pointing with her finger, there was an "X" mark drawn. It was in a low enough place that you had to bend at the waist and knees and lower your head to see it.
"Ha Yeong-won. Yang Ju-hui. Look at this. There's another mark. It's an arrow."
Now that I looked, there were marks made with black crayon on the low wall surfaces of this hallway. It seemed we hadn't noticed them when we first came out of the elevator because we hadn't taken out the flashlight.
Jeong Seok said, "An X generally means rejection or negation. Maybe they wanted to mark that this elevator isn't it. How about following the arrow?"
It was the moment I was agreeing with Jeong Seok's deduction in various ways. From afar, a voice that pierced my ears was heard.
"Ha Yeong-won. Over here."
"...Mom?"
I could tell that this was Mom's voice. Because a son can distinguish his mother's voice even when ten people are speaking at the same time.
"Is it really Mom?" I wondered if Mom was beyond that dark corner. The cell phone, which was presumed to react when ghosts approached, wasn't making any noise.
"Ha Yeong-won. Over here. Here."
My heart was filled with relief and longing at the voice of Mom that I'd really wanted to hear. What broke that mood was Yang Ju-hui's curse.
"Shit, what the hell is that!"
"Over here. Here. The exit. Mom's going to go out through this exit. Even if you hear Mom's voice, it's not Mom. Mom already went out, so even if you hear this voice, don't ever follow it—."
Roll, roll, roll-. Something mimicking Mom's voice exactly was rolling toward us.