...It Opens
The moment I stepped through to the far side of the room, the door shut behind me on its own.
Pitch-black darkness was there to greet me.
I stood still for a moment, and then a series of soft tick-tick sounds rose up — like an old incandescent bulb struggling to life — and the room brightened.
I squinted against the sudden glare until my eyes adjusted and the scene came into focus.
An old house, the kind you see in American period dramas. A living room stretched out before me. Hardwood floors, a table, assorted odds and ends scattered about. Only a few steps away, a staircase climbed toward the second floor.
For a fleeting second I wondered if this really was just an escape room after all — then I walked over to the nearest window, parted the curtains a crack, and looked outside. A curse slipped out of me before I could stop it.
Beyond the glass lay a nightscape drowned in darkness, an old village nestled within it. Beyond the village, forest seemed to stretch on forever, and that forest was choked with fog.
The fog seethed and rolled between the edge of the woods and the village boundary.
I frowned, studying the view, and then I noticed something wrong.
...That wasn't fog.
I'd seen plenty of genuinely thick fog in my life, and fog never clumped together like wads of smoke. Real fog was just a hazy filter laid over an ordinary landscape — the kind of thing you saw every day. Not this. Not something that writhed and coiled like living smoke.
I traced the suspicious fog with my eyes and realized it seemed to encircle the entire village.
A distant, echoing flutter kept reaching me from far off. I slowly tilted my head back, intending to look up past the window toward the sky —
...and stopped.
You know that feeling? The one where you haven't actually seen anything with your eyes, but you're certain someone, somewhere, is watching you.
That was what hit me.
It might have been nothing. But the conviction that lifting my head any further would be a terrible idea locked me in place. I held my breath, backed away as quietly as I could, and put distance between myself and the curtains.
"What the hell!"
A sharp female voice cut through the silence without warning. I spun around toward the sound — and there, leaning on the second-floor railing in old-fashioned American dress, was the club president.
"...Oh, it's you, oppa. What are you doing down there?"
That snappish tone of hers. The anxiety that had been swelling without end finally settled, replaced by pure irritation at the president.
And never mind that — What are you doing down there? Had she still not grasped the situation?
Before I could open my mouth, doors creaked open from every room and the club members began to appear.
Three from the upstairs rooms. Two from the ground floor — including Yeom Sang-hyeon.
That made five members total, plus me, plus the president. No one from the club was missing.
Two of them were still chattering away, praising how well-made everything was, completely oblivious. Three others, including the president, looked like they'd sensed something was off. And Yeom Sang-hyeon came straight toward me with his face set in a grim, serious expression.
Yeah...
At least you I could count on to take this seriously.
He always projected that popular-guy energy, diving into every conversation, acting light and easy — but when it mattered, he could go dead serious without hesitation.
Sang-hyeon kept his face rigid and whispered to me.
"Hyung. I think this escape room's gonna cost us a fortune."
I couldn't help myself. I smacked him upside the head.
"I was just kidding..."
I watched Sang-hyeon rub the back of his head in a dejected little voice, and...
...I didn't feel particularly guilty.
Pulling a stunt like that in a situation like this? By my standards, one hit was a free pass. Besides, I'd barely tapped him — just enough to snap him out of it. Nowhere near a full-power swing.
Sang-hyeon clearly knew that too. He dropped the pout almost immediately, stepped closer, and asked,
"But hyung, do you have any idea what's going on here?"
"......Do you?"
The cold reply made him flinch a little before he pressed on.
"Well, I've been thinking about everything that felt off on the way here. First of all—"
I listened quietly as he laid out point after point. Almost everything he said lined up with the strange things I'd noticed myself today.
Near the end, his voice seemed to tremble, which startled me slightly — though I kept it off my face. Looking at him properly, I finally understood.
He'd been trying to act normal. Cracking jokes, keeping his tone bright. It was his own desperate way of holding it together in a situation this absurdly, mind-breakingly terrifying.
"....So what I'm saying is. Getting moved from an underground space into a two-story house like this — don't you think we're in serious trouble? My best guess is human trafficking. Like I said earlier, that weird contract we signed a little while ago — what if it was some kind of body-waiver form?"
".....There's some logic to that, I'll give you. But I don't think so. This feels... a little more unreal than that."
"....Un...real?"
"Have you looked out the window?"
He shook his head. I pulled him over to the curtained window and showed him the view through the gap.
"...."
Speechless, his pupils trembling as they swept the surroundings — and the moment those eyes started to lift upward, I shot my hand out and blocked the space between the glass and his face.
"..Wh-what. W...why'd you do that?"
He stammered, startled. I quietly pulled him back from the window, waited until I was sure he'd stepped clear, then spoke.
"It's nothing major, maybe. I just got a weird feeling. So I figured looking at the sky was a bad idea."
Sang-hyeon went still, then nodded.
"..If something feels off, better not to do it. Hyung, have you noticed or seen any other clues besides that?"
"...Ah! That—"
I was about to tell him about the Suspicious Guide's shadow — about the real face underneath — when a sharp voice cut across the room.
"What are you two whispering about over there? At this rate we're never going to find the clues and get out of here."
The president's irritated, edge-honed tone. Hearing it made a fresh spark of anger rise in me — and in proportion, the anxiety settled a little further.
When fear kept swelling, cold sweat running, hands shaking so badly I couldn't think straight — having that calm down, the sweat easing, my hands steadying enough to think clearly again, was a good sign.
But watching someone still raise their voice and snap at people even in a situation this bad... I could feel anger stirring in my chest like a rising tide.
I kept it off my face and said,
"We've got things we need to talk about. Everyone gather at the living room table."
"...Fine. Whatever."
Once the club members had settled onto the sofas and chairs arranged around the living room table, I opened my mouth and laid it out.
Every strange and uncanny thing I'd felt on the way here. The unreal situation we were trapped in. The fact that we'd all walked through doors lined up on the same floor, into rooms that should have been connected — and yet some of us had come out on the first floor, others on the second.
By the time I finished, the two members who'd been chattering cheerfully without a clue had gone rigid. The others and the president already looked deathly pale.
"—And this might just be me seeing things, but the guide who brought us here. Did anyone get a look at his face?"
I glanced around. Nobody had.
"This is going to sound completely insane, but... on that face... how do I even put this."
"What is it?"
The president's snappish voice again. I borrowed the anger it sparked and forced out the words I'd been hesitating over.
"His face was covered in tiny mouths. Dozens of them. Mouths full of needle-like teeth."
Silence dropped over us like a weight.
"....."
"....."
"....."
"....."
"....."
"....."
"What kind of nonsense is that?"
A sharp voice shattered the quiet.
"You can't just say ridiculous things like that... you need to draw a line somewhere. Everything you've listed so far is just weird feelings, vibes — nothing that actually happened, no real evidence, so..."
Oh...
...What is this idiot even saying.
"...Then how do you explain us coming out on different floors?"
"Th-that's a simple trick! They put different slopes on the floors of the rooms we entered so you wouldn't notice the height difference, and dropped each of us off at different levels!"
I stood up right then and there.
The president flinched back slightly, startled.
What, did she think I was going to hit her? At least she seemed to realize she was over the line.
I walked across the living room and, in full view of everyone, took hold of the doorknob on the room Sang-hyeon had come out of.
"You all saw Sang-hyeon come out of this door."
He'd been the last to join us, so every member sitting on the living room sofas nodded.
"..W-what are you doing? In escape rooms they lock the doors behind you so you can't go back. Even something that basic—"
The president muttered a stream of objections, trying to argue me down. But if my hunch was right, something entirely different was about to happen.
Even with my hand on the knob, part of me desperately hoped everything I'd said was wrong. At the same time, the certainty that it wasn't only grew stronger. I twisted the handle in one sharp motion.
— Click.
"See! It won't ope— ...wait. That opens..."
She'd only prepared for it not opening.
But my expectation went further than a door that simply unlocked. I was certain that what waited beyond would be something far stranger than any of the others had imagined.
— Creeeak.
And the door opened.