Nowhere to Be Found #1
I shoved Yang Ju-hui and Jeong Seok into the box and slammed the lid shut. Then I switched off the flashlight. Total darkness swallowed the corridor. Rumble, rumble—. Click, click. I could feel the two ghosts drawing steadily closer. The temperature plunged several degrees in an instant. I clenched my teeth and held my breath.
A once-in-a-lifetime gamble. All or nothing.
Click, click. Rumble, rumble.
Finally the high-heel clicks stopped right in front of my nose.
“Yeong-won.”
The head ghost calling my name had also come right up to me. I pressed myself flat against the wall. Crunch, crunch. Rumble, rumble. The head ghost met the headless high-heel ghost. They were so close that one stretch of my hand would brush those nightmare figures. My heart hammered like it would explode, and every drop of blood in my body seemed to drain straight to my feet.
But—they showed no sign of noticing me. My gamble had worked! Just like earlier, when the head ghost’s gaze had slid right past me and locked only onto Jeong Seok and Yang Ju-hui, I’d taken the chance.
“Hehehehehehe.”
The head ghost let out a sudden laugh. Right as I braced for whatever came next, the high-heel ghost slowly reached out, grabbed the head, and pressed it onto its own severed neck.
“This isn’t the body.”
Thud. Roll, roll, roll.
The head tumbled off and rolled back down the corridor it had come from. The high-heel ghost in the white coat creaked its stiffened joints and continued straight ahead, disappearing into the darkness.
Crackle—.
The moment the discordant ringtone from the phone inside the box cut off, I finally exhaled the breath I’d been holding. I had won the gamble.
“It actually worked. The Faint Perfume.”
A perfume made from water a fairy splashed in. Dramatically lowers the chance of being detected by horrors and Watchers. Lasts 100 hours after use.
It was an incredible item. In other words… right now I was practically in stealth mode as far as the ghosts were concerned. With this, I really could escape.
“Guys. You can come out now!”
Once I was sure the ghosts’ presence had completely vanished, I called my friends. The moment I lifted the lid, I met the eyes of Jeong Seok and Yang Ju-hui, both frozen stiff like mice in front of a cat.
“Hey! What the hell was that?!”
Yang Ju-hui burst out of the box and hissed at me in a furious whisper. Jeong Seok just stood there with his mouth hanging open, looking utterly dumbfounded. Since the ghosts might return at any moment, I tried to explain as simply as possible.
“I used the Faint Perfume, remember? Spraying it drastically lowers the chance of ghosts detecting you. The head ghost acted like it couldn’t see me earlier, so I took the gamble.”
“……”
Yang Ju-hui still looked like she didn’t quite get it. Jeong Seok, however, nodded as if he understood perfectly.
“I see. But you said you’d never used perfume before. There was no guarantee the ghosts wouldn’t see you just because you sprayed it, right?”
“True. But we didn’t exactly have time to weigh the options.”
The box was only big enough for two people. The corridor was a straight line with ghosts at both ends. Someone had to be sacrificed, and I had the highest chance of survival.
“Wow. You’re actually insane. No matter how you look at it, I never would’ve thought of that. Still… your judgment was correct in the end.”
Jeong Seok looked genuinely impressed by my decisiveness and gamble. Yang Ju-hui, on the other hand, frowned like she was still a little angry.
“Hey. Next time at least give us some kind of warning, even if it’s vague. Do you know how terrified I was?!”
“I would’ve explained if I had the time. Anyway, let’s move. We don’t want them coming back.”
We chose to push forward. Our destination was the exit. The place was dark and gloomy, but our progress seemed surprisingly smooth.
“Is it really telling us to go in here?”
Following the crayon marks down the straight corridor, we arrived in front of a door labeled Operating Room.
East: 25 Steps
“Is it really telling us to go in here?” Yang Ju-hui asked me again.
The girl who had fearlessly taken the lead the entire time now looked genuinely spooked. I studied her expression.
“I think we’re supposed to go inside. Why? Is something bothering you?”
Small, trivial details—paper on the floor, odd feelings—could become vital puzzle pieces for us now. Maybe she felt the same strangeness I did about finding an operating room inside what was supposed to be a kindergarten. I thought it was strange too.
I checked Yang Ju-hui’s mood. She pointed into the lab.
“No, look over there. There’s a massive spider web inside. I’m kind of scared of spiders.”
So that was it. The same Yang Ju-hui who had stomped cockroaches to death with her bare foot was afraid of spiders. I’d thought she was some kind of general like Guan Yu or Zhang Fei, but she was still a girl after all.
The tension that had been wound tight suddenly loosened. I couldn’t help letting out a small laugh.
“Yang Ju-hui, you’re cute. If any spiders show up, I’ll catch them for you. I’m scared of cockroaches, but spiders don’t bother me.”
“What the hell!”
“Guys. Stop chatting and let’s just go inside,” Jeong Seok warned us.
Even so, he didn’t look eager to step in first. He was clearly hoping someone else would take the lead. I’d noticed it today—Jeong Seok was more of a coward than he seemed. Normally Yang Ju-hui would have gone first, but the spider webs had her hesitating. So I took point.
“Come on, we’re almost there. Just a little more. Please let the exit be inside here. Please.”
Slide—. I opened the sliding door and stepped into the operating room.
The stench of various chemicals hit me so hard my nose nearly twisted. Two surgical tables—exactly what you’d see in a real OR—stood in the center, both stained with something dark and crusty. Was that… blood?
What really caught our attention, though, were the two elevators on the far side. They stood side by side like twins, exactly one meter apart.
“Any marks? See any crayon marks?” Jeong Seok asked Yang Ju-hui.
She had the best eyesight among us. She took my flashlight and swept it around, but eventually shook her head.
“I don’t see any. Ha Yeong-won, what about you? You said you could see writing, right?”
East: 1 Step
“It looks like the left elevator.”
If I hadn’t had the status window… even if we’d luckily followed the crayon marks this far, we would’ve had to make a pure fifty-fifty guess between the two elevators.
“Ha Yeong-won. Look at this.”
Jeong Seok, who had been rummaging through the operating room, called for our attention. In his hand was a medical chart like doctors carried. The paper was covered in dark reddish-brown stains, but words were clearly written on it.
Research indicates that talent is passed through blood. Parents and children. Twin sisters will prove our theory.
Twins truly are remarkable. The growth of sisters ─Yeri and ── has stood out among all the children in the facility over the past five years. Especially the younger sister ───’s aptitude as a Watcher far exceeds expectations.
The younger sister has a unique mole that the older sister lacks. Could this single difference create a gap in potential even between twins who share the same blood? In any case, these sisters will surely lead us to ─.
The experiment has failed.
“Do you think this means anything?” Jeong Seok asked for my opinion.
I looked at the two surgical tables in the operating room and thought about it, but nothing specific came to mind. Something involving twins had failed… that was about all I could get from it. Still, the word Watcher written there bothered me a lot.
“Hey. What are you two doing over there? Aren’t we leaving? You said the left elevator!”
I snapped out of my thoughts at Yang Ju-hui’s call. We really should get out of this place as fast as possible. We boarded the elevator.
To be honest, the inside of the elevator was far from sanitary. There were one hundred floor buttons, and every single one of them was labeled 4.
“Should I just press any button? They’re all the fourth floor anyway,” Yang Ju-hui asked.
Jeong Seok shook his head. “That… I think we need to think about it a bit more.”
All fourth floors, huh. As I carefully examined the buttons, I spotted one with a dark reddish fingerprint-like stain on it. It looked like someone had pressed it with a bloody finger.
“Okay. I’ll choose.”
Press—. Out of all one hundred identical buttons, I firmly pushed the only one with a mole-like stain on the 4.
The doors closed—. Whooooooong—.
The elevator began moving to a place where I couldn’t tell if we were going up or down.
The doors will open.
Clunk—. Shooooong.
About a minute after we boarded, the doors opened. The scene beyond them felt strangely familiar.
“It’s outside! We’re out!”
Yang Ju-hui stepped out of the elevator first. Jeong Seok followed cautiously after her.
“This is the fourth floor of your apartment building, Yeong-won. Right? Right! We’re really back! Fuck! We survived!”
I stepped out after them. Someone coming up the stairs immediately started yelling at us.
“Hey! This was you kids, wasn’t it?! Throwing paper and tape all over the stairs!”
It was the building manager auntie who lived on the fourth floor of Taegwang Villa. In her hand was a sign that read Do Not Board the Elevator. The paper looked very familiar.
Jeong Seok checked his phone.
“…Not even a minute has passed. It’s 11:20. Only a minute since we entered the elevator.”
“I’m talking to you! Why aren’t you answering?! Did you kids do this?!”
I looked away from the auntie’s scolding and stared at the elevator we had just exited. It had vanished like it had never existed.
The manager auntie’s usual angry shouting somehow sounded sweet right now. It was the voice of everyday life, and nothing made me feel more clearly that we had survived.
Congratulations! You have triumphed over the ‘Death Elevator’!
Settling rewards for 3 survivors.
You have obtained 300P.
I picked up the ‘capsule’ that had fallen in front of my apartment door. It was quite heavy. Crack, pop—. When I opened it, a small pen was inside. Letters floated up as I looked at it.
A pen that remains clearly visible even in darkness. Any mark made with this pen cannot be erased unless the cap’s eraser is used.
A pen? After all that suffering, the reward was just a pen—That thought crossed my mind for a second. But when I remembered how much the crayon marks had helped us back on that death floor… the uses for this pen seemed endless.
Clunk—. I opened the door and went inside. I’d hoped my mom, who had escaped first, would be waiting for me, but my expectations were wrong. The power was out—her phone was still turned off. I decided to wait for her.
The next morning, after serious deliberation, I went to the police station and filed a missing person report for my mom. Luckily or unluckily, I had the phone number of a Yeongji High senior who was now a police officer. He helped me with the report.
My mom was found on the third day after we escaped the elevator—in a random street in Jimun-dong near the bustling downtown area of Geryong City. The person who discovered her was someone I knew, though I never would have guessed it.
Click. Click. Click.
The sound of high heels sent chills down my spine for a moment—. When I turned my head, a woman in elegant red high heels, a sophisticated suit, and a seductive choker was walking toward me. She was the woman I had once had a crush on.
“Yo.”
“…Hong Miri, ma’am?”
“That’s right. Class 1-D punk. Good to see you. You’re here to see your mom, right? Shall we go together?”
Click. Click.
The English teacher strode elegantly and alluringly into the hospital on her tall high heels.