The First Round Story (1)
I suppose this is as good a place as any to tell it.
How I came to possess these abnormal powers. Why I changed into what I am now.
And for that, I need to start from the beginning.
This story begins the moment I first switched off the lights, stepped through the escape-room door, and crossed into that bizarre village.
The instant I stepped through to the other side, the door shut behind me on its own.
Ahead, nothing but pitch-black darkness waited to greet me.
I stood still for a moment. Then, with the familiar tick-tick of an old incandescent bulb struggling to life, the room flooded with light.
I squinted against the sudden brightness. As my eyes adjusted, the scene came into focus.
It looked like something out of an American period drama—an old house, a living room. Wooden floorboards, a table, assorted odds and ends scattered about. Only a few steps away, a staircase led up to the second floor.
For a fleeting second I wondered if this really was just an escape room after all. Then I walked to the nearest window, parted the curtains a crack, and peered outside. A curse slipped out under my breath before I could stop it.
Beyond the glass stretched a nightscape of absolute darkness and an old village. Beyond the village, forest seemed to go on forever. Fog choked the trees, rolling and seething between the edge of the woods and the village boundary.
That… that was not fog.
I had seen heavy fog before—plenty of times. Real fog never clumped and writhed like smoke packed into dense, living masses. Ordinary fog was just a hazy filter laid over everyday scenery. Not this. Not something that pulsed and twisted as if it were breathing.
I traced the suspicious mass with my eyes. It seemed to encircle the entire village.
A distant, echoing flutter of wings kept drawing my attention. I started to tilt my head back, slowly, to look up past the window frame toward the sky—
…and stopped.
Have you ever felt it? That sensation that someone is watching you, even though you never actually see them?
That was exactly what hit me.
It might have been nothing. But the conviction that lifting my head any higher would be a catastrophic mistake froze me in place. I held my breath, backed away as silently as I could, and put distance between myself and the curtains.
“What the—!”
A sharp female voice cut through the silence. I spun around. Standing on the second-floor landing, dressed in old-fashioned American clothes, was the club president.
“…Oh. It’s you, oppa. What are you doing over there?”
Her voice was clipped, almost irritated. I couldn’t find a single word to answer with, so I said nothing.
“….”
When I stayed silent, she simply sighed, came down the stairs, and walked past me.
The rest of the members had already gathered, chattering in a strangely giddy atmosphere. Outside was wrong. A mansion appearing out of nowhere was wrong. Everything screamed that something unnatural was happening—yet they were laughing and talking as if none of it mattered.
The sheer unreality of it left me speechless.
They kept gushing about how high-quality the escape room was, feverish with excitement, until one of them suggested they check the paper bags each of them had been given. After that they decided to split up and start hunting for clues.
Their behavior already felt badly off-kilter. I had wanted to run the moment I saw it, but after looking outside, all will to escape had drained out of me.
How was I supposed to run from this?
A place that had suddenly transformed. A village thick with an uncanny atmosphere. Club members growing stranger by the second. Incomprehensible things piled up until my breathing turned shallow and ragged.
Afraid I might actually black out, I slapped my own cheek hard. The sharp sting cleared my head. I drew a deep breath.
The members who had scattered like a flock of birds began drifting back together.
“Why. Are. You. There. A.lone?”
They had been laughing among themselves with empty eyes. Then one of them suddenly turned that hollow gaze on me and asked the question. The others fell silent at once and fixed me with the same vacant stare.
I wanted to scream. Instead I forced myself to walk toward them as if nothing were wrong. Only then did their blank expressions soften; they turned away and resumed their chatter.
Up close I could see it clearly—some of them had wild, unfocused eyes that looked half-mad. Others twitched as if spasms were running through their bodies.
Everything was growing more abnormal by the minute, yet not a single person noticed or pointed it out. They all acted as if this were perfectly normal.
Then the president appeared from the first-floor kitchen and started walking toward us. I swallowed a gasp. Luckily I was standing at the very back of the group, so she never saw the shock on my face.
She had been in the kitchen for a while. Now she was approaching with a large kitchen knife held reverse-grip, her footsteps unnaturally precise and deliberate.
The members’ gaits, their eyes, every little mannerism had been sliding further from normal. The president was no exception. I had only watched her from a corner of the living room, but even before she disappeared into the kitchen she had been changing, second by second, into something wrong.
“Doesn’t seem like there’s much to find here, does it? Shall we head outside for a bit?”
She smiled as she made the suggestion—a smile that made my skin crawl.
Every instinct screamed that I had to stop her. I just didn’t know how. Force? She was holding a knife. Words? The others were already far past the point of listening to reason.
While I stood there hesitating, the president strode straight to the front door. Her legs moved in long, confident strides—click, click—and for a moment I thought I saw pure madness in that walk.
She yanked the door open and stepped out. The members followed in a rush, as if entranced.
Just as it seemed everyone was leaving, she suddenly looked back. I had stopped for a second; now I staggered forward toward the door as naturally as I could manage.
Whether it was fortune or misfortune, she didn’t notice I was still sane. She turned and kept walking.
I swallowed the scream that wanted to tear free of my throat.
And so we walked into hell.
Once we were outside, every kind of horror imaginable found us.
At first we simply walked through a village saturated with a nauseating, dark-red light. Then we saw a strange human silhouette in the distance.
It had been moving in a completely different direction. The moment it noticed us, it changed course and came toward us at a rapid pace.
When it drew close enough, it fixed its attention on the president and produced a wet, guttural sound—like something scraping raw vocal cords.
The president’s smile turned chilling. Without warning she grabbed the member standing right behind her and flung them sideways.
I lunged instinctively toward the thrown member—then froze solid. The strange human-shaped thing was already standing over the fallen body.
The president strolled onward as if nothing had happened. Like rats following the Pied Piper, the rest of us resumed our death-march behind her.
I glanced sideways as I walked. The discarded member was clutching their head, muttering to themselves.
“Wh-what… where is this…?”
They never got the chance to fully return to their senses.
The bizarre mud-like human dropped to one knee beside the still-confused member, slipped a hand into its own chest, and then whipped that hand high into the air. Where the hand had been empty a moment before, a jagged dagger now gleamed.
I saw exactly what was about to happen. I snapped my head forward again.
Even with my eyes averted, the sound still carved itself into my ears—sharp, wet, relentless. The blade punched through the member’s back, rose into the air, and came down again. And again.
“Kyaaaaaah—aaaaagh—aaaaaah!”
The raw, full-throated scream made me flinch hard. Shaking with terror, I locked my gaze on the shoes of the person walking ahead of me and forced myself to keep moving. Then the sudden press of countless footsteps around us made me start; I risked a sidelong look.
They had already gathered—bodies melting while they grinned with grotesque delight, an old woman whose mouth was split impossibly wide, things so liquefied or distorted they barely retained human shape. They filled the space around us, dragging their feet toward the screaming sacrifice as if they already knew it could never escape.
The circle of horrors tightened slowly. I clamped my hands over my ears hard enough to hurt and pushed forward.
But the screams, echoing with pure agony, still forced their way between my fingers and into my skull.
Again.
And again.
Without end.