The Second Round (1)
It felt like something that had happened only a few hours ago — and yet the situation unfolding before me was entirely different.
Back then, that snide, needling voice had left me scrambling for a reply, stammering uselessly. This time, the trembling fear that I might be trapped here forever had just been simmering in my chest — until that same voice sparked pure irritation instead.
And once the irritation rose, the anxiety settled, strangely calm.
At the same time, I watched the club members file out of their rooms at the sound of doors opening. These were the same people who, mere hours ago, had died one by one in the most horrific ways imaginable — and yet here they were, laughing and chatting as if nothing had happened.
I counted them off one by one. Five club members, myself, and the president. Everyone accounted for.
Unlike last time, I wore a serious expression, already thinking hard — and sure enough, Yeom Sang-hyeon approached me with a grave look of his own.
His final moments from the previous round rose unbidden in my mind. The guy who, to the very end, had told me to run. The only person besides me who had broken free of the president's tricks — that madness, or hypnosis, or whatever it had been.
Yeah...
I always knew you could be serious when it counted. Always projecting that popular-guy aura, bouncing around everywhere, looking light and carefree on the surface — but when things got real, you got deadly serious.
Sang-hyeon's face hardened as he leaned in to whisper.
"Hyung. I think this escape room's gonna cost us a fortune."
I couldn't help myself. I smacked him upside the head.
After that, Sang-hyeon offered me his own "realistic" interpretation of our situation — but I had already lived through too much, and I could still feel enough of it lingering now, to know we were squarely in the realm of the unreal.
So I explained what I had experienced. I made sure he understood.
Even as we talked, I took stock of my body and the thoughts running through my head. The abnormal changes that had overtaken my flesh and mind in the mansion — right before death, while reading that strange book — seemed to have fully reversed. I was ordinary again. Human, more or less.
Fortunately, the "insight" I had gained as my mind transformed hadn't vanished entirely. Some of it remained, and with that as a foundation, I could confirm what needed doing and act on it.
First, I gathered the club members and explained our current situation — drilled it into them. So they could look reality in the eye. So they wouldn't unconsciously slip into madness.
Even then, the president kept running his mouth about something or other, which was irritating — but strangely enough, that very irritation made him feel like the real president, not the murderer.
And for this nonsensical situation, I even put on a little door-opening demonstration so they could see and grasp it for themselves.
Then I took one look at the president thrashing around like he was having a seizure, and I was certain. That behavior was far closer to what the club members had done when the madness took them in the previous round — not the deranged fake-psycho version of the president.
Remembering how the members had snapped back to their senses when they felt pain last time, I slapped him across the face. And sure enough, I could see him recovering some measure of clarity.
...I hit him as a solution to the madness. No other reason.
...Probably.
.
.
.
.
Well... the image of that insane president from the last round might have overlapped a little. Maybe a bit of leftover irritation mixed in?
Once I'd put some basic mental safeguards in place for the members and scattered them to their rooms, I picked a room, went inside, and waited for Sang-hyeon.
While I waited, I searched the room. Nothing unusual turned up. Maybe the fact that I'd briefly become some "unknown entity" and then been restored to ordinary by the pocket watch was something I could take comfort in.
As I waited and turned things over in my mind, I reached a conclusion: in the previous round, there had been a dangerous presence wearing our faces — the president's included — deceiving us. So, just in case I needed to "handle" something, I gripped the fountain pen I'd found in an envelope. Not exactly a reliable weapon, but good enough in a pinch.
I tested him with a few questions, watched his reactions, and confirmed Sang-hyeon was thankfully not one of those things. I could lay out my plan. He was a bit of an airhead about some of it, though.
That was when I felt something wrong with my body.
My shoulder began to ache fiercely. It wasn't the ordinary pins-and-needles of a cramp or a muscle going numb — a faint, creeping unpleasantness, small and slow but unmistakable, was spreading through my shoulder.
At first I clung to a thin hope that I'd just been gripping the fountain pen too hard from the tension. But the discomfort kept building, and I had no choice but to accept it.
Even so, I kept up a casual conversation with Sang-hyeon while that sensation crept outward, slower and slower — and the thought solidified: we needed to get out of here as fast as possible.
Once we'd roughly covered everything and divided our roles — one of us taking the first floor, the other the second — I asked him something just before we split up.
If we could get out of here, didn't it seem like the more people we had, the lower our chances of escaping? What did he think we should do?
Sang-hyeon laughed as he answered.
"Obviously we all make it out alive together."
There wasn't a single speck of falsehood in those clear eyes.
As the unpleasant sensation in my shoulder grew worse, I kneaded at it and climbed the stairs to start checking rooms.
Looking through a room that seemed to hold nothing of note, the conversation I'd just had with Sang-hyeon drifted back naturally.
As for protecting ourselves... well, I more or less slipped him the method for snapping out of the madness, so that should be fine.
And "you look different"...
I already know. I've lived through it. But if he's saying I've changed this suddenly, does that mean the thing I was worried about is already happening?
I lifted the edge of my outer layer and checked the shoulder that had been hurting since earlier.
Black spots had sprouted across it, like minute beads of vinyl.
I finished searching while turning that over alone, then moved into the next room — and this time, it wasn't just my body. Something was wrong with my vision as well.
In the middle of a routine search, the world in front of my eyes swam. And for a few seconds, I could see straight through to something shimmering like heat haze, buried so deep in a desk drawer that no one would ever find it without already knowing it was there.
I opened the drawer, reached in, and felt around — and pulled out a knife that was clearly no ordinary blade.
I looked around the rest of the room after that, but the same "uncanny vision" didn't return. I left.
As I continued checking rooms, I found one that wouldn't open. A moment's thought made it easy enough to deduce the president was inside. I called out briefly; the door opened, and I confirmed it was him.
But the moment I opened the door and looked his way, my vision swam again — and the scenery shifted. The shapes were mostly the same, but everything wavered like the smoke of an unstable candle flame, the colors drained and muted. The one thing that stood out sharp and clear was the thick book in the president's hands.
Fortunately — if you could call it that — even through the uncanny vision, I saw no particular signs or heat-haze shimmer around him. And the red handprint on his cheek was still there, which suggested he hadn't been swapped out for something else yet.
I finished my check quickly. Given that something about that book stood out, the odds were high it was a survival record — something critical to escaping.
I put questions to the president, steering the topic so he wouldn't realize I already knew about the book. I'd only meant to change the subject, but his answers gave me a partial understanding of the process by which the club members had been gradually consumed by madness in the previous round.
I listened for a while and examined the book, but it didn't look like the record I was after. I asked his permission and flipped through it roughly — old stories, fairy-tale sorts of things — then handed it back.
Given that this was a study, a survival record almost had to be here somewhere, and I still didn't want to tip my hand about that information if I could help it. I needed the president out of the room.
Luck was on my side: other club members came in, and I left him with them.
Alone, I started sweeping the surroundings as fast as I could. I would have kept using the uncanny vision if I could — but my eyes ached, and more than that, I could feel my body and mind changing, frighteningly, every time I called on it.
Fortunately, it didn't take long to find a notebook. I climbed to the second floor of the study and began reading through the survival records at speed.
Before long, I realized that even if the book the president had been holding wasn't a survival record, it was Tillydildri's Collection of Minstrel Tales — which meant it was one of the escape methods.
Well... a shame, but since he found it, he can use it whenever he wants.
I also learned that escaping via that book would be difficult in the direction I was thinking. My goal was basically "get everyone out alive" — and that method meant wandering other mansions looking for more books? Following every single rule written in these records?
Sure, it was possible. But I was certain a few of the members would die along the way.
Next, learning that the knife I'd found counted as an escape tool put my mind at ease. At least I had one solid means of getting out secured.
The uneasy part, though... I couldn't help wondering whether the knife would even work on a body that was changing by the second.