Hide and Seek (1) — The Guide Card
Beyond the door, the scene that greeted us was a bathroom flickering under a blinking fluorescent light.
An old sink and toiletries that barely managed to look like they belonged. Here and there, thin black liquid had dripped down and hardened into thread-like strands.
"...Wh-what is this?"
The president blurted out, sounding flustered.
"...Th-the other rooms? We might have opened the wrong one!"
It came out more like a command than a suggestion, but I moved without a word and opened the doors to the other rooms.
One of them was locked, but the rest opened smoothly without resistance, each revealing the typical old American-style rooms you'd see in movies.
"...."
"...."
"...."
"...."
"...."
In front of the club members and the president, who seemed frozen in shock from my door-opening spree, I spoke.
"Want me to open the second floor too?"
"Wh-where the hell is this place then?!"
"...Th-this... maybe it's this?"
While I had been opening doors, the vice president had been diligently rummaging through the brown envelope. In a hesitant voice, she pulled out a palm-sized card-like piece of paper.
On the front was a bizarre design where various letters seemed chaotically tangled into a grotesque form.
Flipping the card over revealed dense, tiny writing.
If you wander without destination, you will pass through various regions and villages.
It is a perfectly ordinary part of daily life, yet extremely rarely, strange dangers lurk within that ordinary everyday.
You were driving along the highway when you discovered your car was out of gas, and barely managed to take a side road to arrive at a village.
You intended to fill up the tank and leave quickly, but lo and behold—you instinctively felt that something was off about the atmosphere.
Before you knew it, a suspicious fog had enveloped the entire village, accompanied by bizarre cries.
Witnessing the strange phenomena descending upon you, you realized you had come to the wrong place.
Hurriedly entering an empty house in front of you to hide, you found a record left behind by a survivor somewhere.
And you discovered that a deadly game of hide-and-seek—where people kill and are killed—is taking place in this village.
Will you be able to return alive from this village?
It was the same content I had seen just a few minutes ago, but looking at it now, it felt far heavier than before.
"H-hand it over!"
With trembling hands, the president snatching the card as if to crumple it, then glared at it as if he would tear it apart.
He read it over and over as if unable to believe it, then at some point turned his head and stared at the vice president with murderous eyes.
"Y-you messed up! Wh-why did you pick something like thiiis!!"
Honestly, it was a situation that made me want to sigh.
But I understood why the president was acting this way. In this extreme stress situation, he was half out of his mind, spouting words without even knowing what he was saying. Maybe later, when he came to his senses, he might think he was quite wrong... or perhaps even reflect on it.
But understanding why he was doing it didn't mean I accepted it.
I slapped the president hard across the cheek as he was about to shout.
His face, flushed red and ready to scream in rage, whipped around with a sharp turn. In that moment of shock, the president's ranting stopped.
Seizing the opportunity, I shoved words into his head, which was full of chaos.
"Get a grip. When we were in the parlor, every single option was nothing but insane content. You think picking the choice you wanted would have made things easier? And can't you even grasp the situation right now? If you don't understand, read the damn card again. It says hide and seek, you idiot. It's written right there. And you're yelling in a situation like this?"
I spoke as if chewing on each and every letter rather than shouting.
The president, his head still turned from the slap, remained frozen and listened to my words without saying anything.
Leaving the frozen president as he was, I quietly began speaking to the club members.
"Alright, I assume everyone understands the situation we're in now. So what should we be doing right now?"
"...Should we call the police?..... Ah! My phone!"
One of the members who had been quiet offered an opinion, then busily rummaged through his pockets. But there was no way a phone would be in the clothes we'd changed into. Besides that, a few careless friends seemed to have left their belongings in the room as they were.
After taking a moment to check our belongings, the ones who had brought their stuff were me, the vice president, and one other member—three people total.
I had hoped Yeom Sang-hyeon might have brought his, but surprisingly, he seemed to have left everything behind. When I looked at him suspiciously, Yeom Sang-hyeon answered with an awkward smile.
"In escape rooms, they often ban electronic devices, you know. I thought it was the same this time... haha.."
"...Anyway, if we all take out our phones, it'll probably be the same for everyone—calls don't seem to go through. Not only that, but it feels a bit... weird too."
There was no signal indicator at all. Judging by how the phone screens occasionally crackled and shook, they seemed unstable as well.
So what should we do?
"First, we search the rooms."
"Search the rooms...?"
"Yeah. Looting is basic to survival, after all. And we have to get out of here. You planning to stay forever?"
"Can we even leave? We ended up in this strange place we don't even know where it is. You're saying we can go back?"
This time another female member asked.
Honestly, I wasn't sure if we could return to where we originally lived. But if the question was whether we could escape from here...
"Of course. It's written on that card too—'Will you be able to return alive?' And every option we saw in the parlor implied escaping or running away at the end. From what I can tell, I think we were sent here based on the premise of escaping from this place."
"Ha! Then how exactly are we supposed to escape? Call a cab or something?"
"No. But it might be a similar escape route."
"....What?"
"And I get that everyone's having a hard time, but it seems like we're in a really horrific and terrifying situation, you know? It looks like we could die, so let's find anything that could be a clue and use our heads. What did the second paragraph on that card say?"
"..That was.. You were driving along the highway when you discovered your car was out of gas, and barely managed to take a side road to arrive at a village. You intended to fill up the gas and leave quickly, but.... ....Ah!"
"Right. I'm not sure, but making finding gas our priority goal seems good. Of course, finding tools that could help with survival, or for defense and attack, would be good too."
As everyone nodded, another member who had been sitting quietly raised a hand.
...But why is everyone asking me? I got dragged here too.
"..Yeah, what?"
"But... is there anyone among us who can drive? We're all high school students.."
"...If it means living, what can't you do? Even if you don't know how, just roughly start the engine and floor the accelerator. You wanna play deadly hide and seek, or floor the gas on a car you've never driven before?"
"..Th-the accelerator."
"Yeah, good. The rest of you, roughly deduce and think for yourselves while we start looting."
With that, the hesitant members began halfheartedly rummaging through their brown envelopes. At least when Yeom Sang-hyeon stood up first and went into another room, the others finally got up hesitantly, pairing up or going alone into the rooms.
The president, whose face had been red from shouting, gradually regained his color while I was talking to the members, but the red handprint on one side of his face remained.
Not long after all the members had gotten up, the president also quietly rose and went up to the second floor.
Watching the president trudge along as if his soul had left him, I wondered if I had been a bit too harsh...
....Not even a little.
No, with crazy murderers supposedly roaming outside, if he acts like that, it's a miracle I didn't hit him more.
I chose one of the rooms on the first floor that no member had entered yet and went in.
It was an ordinary room. Roughly a small bed, a table, and an old desk lamp. I roughly rummaged through the junk on the table and the drawers, but there wasn't much to find.
But even after almost thoroughly searching the room, I didn't leave. Instead, I kept waiting inside while pretending to rummage around.
Before long, two members came in at the same time. The members who entered flinched when they saw me.
"Oh. I'm looking around here, so you can check other places."
At my words, the members bowed their heads once and walked off to find other rooms.
Not long after, when another member came and I sent him away the same way, this time Yeom Sang-hyeon entered.
"Come in and close the door."
"Uh.. yes, hyung."
As if he had been waiting, I spoke right away, and Yeom Sang-hyeon answered a bit awkwardly as he came in and closed the door.
"Did you find anything?"
"Ah. Not really—"
I asked a question toward Yeom Sang-hyeon, who had come closer.
"What was the first thing you said after getting off the bus today?"
"....What?"
"What did you say after getting off the bus when you came to our meeting place today?"
In the dark room, the question that left my mouth rang out in the silence.
Me waiting for an answer, and Yeom Sang-hyeon with a pale face.
In the bizarre scene illuminated by the small lamp, the objects in the room cast strange, swaying shadows, and behind my back, my hand firmly gripped the metal fountain pen I had found in the brown envelope.