Hide and Seek (2) — What Must Be Found
Faced with the question I asked in a hard, deadly serious voice, Yeom Sang-hyeon answered.
"Wait, how do you even remember that… uh… 'There's going to be a lot more activities coming up'…?"
"Before that."
Sang-hyeon fretted, too flustered even to ask why I was putting him through this, before he finally managed a reply.
"Ah! That one… 'I thought I was going to end up a sardine in a can'…? Is that what you mean?"
"…That's it."
I let the tension drain from my body at the sight of Sang-hyeon giving the right answer. My shoulders were throbbing from how tightly I'd been wound up, and I kneaded them with one hand.
"But why ask something like that… huh?"
He noticed, a beat late, the sharp metal fountain pen clenched in my hand and startled — but I paid him no mind and dropped heavily into the wooden chair in front of the table.
In the dark room, a yellow bulb flickered unsteadily, painting the scene into something grotesque. Sang-hyeon watched me with growing unease before he finally spoke.
"Were you going to…"
He never finished the sentence. I answered it for him.
"…Stab me if I got it wrong? Well… if you hadn't given the right answer, maybe I would have."
Anxiety and something unreadable flooded his eyes. I pressed on without giving him room to dwell on it.
"Listen. They said this is hide-and-seek. So do you really think we're the only ones hiding? Did it never occur to you that the seeker might already be hiding among us?"
"…! Then — did you check the other members too?!"
"No. Just you."
"…What?"
"Honestly, I don't even know if there's really a killer mixed in with us. And even if there is, the second they realize they've been found out too fast, there's no telling what they'd do. They could just go completely berserk. Besides, for what's coming, I only need a handful of people I can actually trust."
His face said he was barely keeping up with the barrage, but I kept driving forward.
"Alright. Just my thinking for now — we can't escape by car."
"…What?"
For a second Sang-hyeon's expression screamed, This bastard is the one who said we should escape by car — what the hell is he talking about?
I wasn't finished.
Keep listening, you idiot.
"More precisely, we might be able to escape by car — but there's something we have to find first, something more important. Without it, we'll die here without even knowing what we're supposed to be doing."
"…Gas?"
"No. Not that. The thing mentioned on the instruction card."
As soon as the words left my mouth, Sang-hyeon opened the brown envelope in his hands and reached inside. He pulled out the card and began examining it carefully. After a long, thorough look, he lifted a face gone completely serious.
"I have no idea."
"…The last paragraph."
"Ah-ha!"
He made a sound of recognition and bent back over the card. A moment later he looked up again.
"Still no idea."
"……"
I began to seriously question whether choosing this guy as the person to move with had been the right call.
In the room where the shadows still twisted grotesquely in time with the swaying light, I picked up where I'd left off.
"What we need to find is a record left behind by a survivor somewhere. Judging by what's written on the card, it might tell us something about our current situation — and if we're lucky, even a way out."
"What?… Ah! Right… here…"
Sang-hyeon chimed in, running a finger down the final paragraph of the card, and I continued.
"And there are several reasons I chose this place."
"This room?"
"No — this option, you idiot. Option 25: Hide and Seek in a Strange Village."
"Ah… uh… did it just seem easy somehow? Or… was it that weird sixth sense you mentioned?"
"…No. First, the card itself says a survivor left a record. That means someone made it through without dying."
"Second… this part could be wrong, but from the moment we walked into the escape-room shop, I thought the guide was suspicious. I already told you that, so you know."
"Yeah…"
"When we picked the first option — the witch thing, whatever it was, the Friday the 13th one — do you remember what the guide said?"
Sang-hyeon dropped his voice into a crude imitation of the guide.
"Aha! An excellent choice!"
"…And the second option?"
"Aha! An excellent choice!"
"…And the third?"
"Aha! An excel—… wait… wait!"
"Exactly. He didn't say a word. It might mean nothing at all — but that's why I picked it."
"Whoa… you thought through all of that and made the call in that short a time?"
"So what did you think I picked it for?"
"Hmm… because you hate the president?"
Oh…
…That's actually pretty sharp.
"…That wasn't entirely off the table either. Anyway — you get the idea, right? Then let's move."
"Ah! Right… but one last thing I'm curious about."
"Yeah."
"Those brown envelopes they handed out to us. Couldn't the survivor's record have been inside one of them? Maybe not yours or mine — maybe they only gave it to one of the other members?"
"When I said we should loot the place, nobody moved until you did. They were all digging through their own brown envelopes. If any of them had found something special, they would've said so right then. Now let's actually move."
After a few more words with Sang-hyeon, we split up. He would search the rooms on the first floor for the survivor's record; I would take the second floor.
I headed straight for the stairs and started climbing. With every step, the wooden treads groaned like something complaining, the sound echoing strangely through the house.
Creak.
Creak.
Creak.
I climbed the whole way kneading my shoulder. The tension from earlier with Sang-hyeon still hadn't fully let go; the numbness was getting worse by the minute.
Once I reached the second floor, I started down the hallway toward the leftmost room. Nearly every door was shut. The place felt so bleak and desolate that I tightened my grip on the metal fountain pen again as I walked.
Most of the others would still be downstairs, I figured — the second floor should be nearly empty. I reached the end of the corridor, opened the door in front of me, and found an ordinary room. I went in and searched thoroughly, but there was nothing of note.
As I looked around, the last conversation I'd had with Sang-hyeon surfaced again.
"Hyung, you seem really different somehow."
"Different how, you punk."
"I mean, we ended up somewhere like this, and you're so calm, and you're thinking everything through… Plus you never really talk to the other members, right? But earlier you gathered everyone up and just started giving orders."
"Honestly, I'm still scared out of my mind."
"…So am I. You just hold it in. If it feels like you're about to lose it, slap yourself and snap out of it."
"Ah…"
"What, want me to do it for you?"
"….."
……………
Hmm. "Different," huh…
Moving this calmly in a situation like this was a little strange, if I was being honest. Even if I knew things — even if I'd already been through something like this — we had been dropped into this, into a space that made no sense, moving through a nameless, grotesque wrongness.
…Am I the abnormal one?
Something about it felt off.
Turning those thoughts over alone, I finished searching the room, stepped out, and went into the next one. This time I found something actually useful.
Deep in a dust-choked desk drawer, beneath an envelope holding three letters written in tiny, unreadable English cursive, I found a silver letter opener whose handle was shaped like a horse's head.
I checked the rest of the room, but there was nothing else worth taking.
The next room was a bathroom. It was in much the same state as the one downstairs. Thin black threads of some unidentifiable sticky substance clung here and there to the cracked, aging tiles and the ceiling. The sight was nauseating enough that I didn't go in — I just leaned this way and that from the doorway, gave the place a quick once-over, and moved on.
I took hold of the next doorknob and turned it the same way I had every other door.
Clunk.
Instead of the smooth give I'd gotten so far, the knob jerked hard against my hand with a solid resistance. At the same time, I heard someone startle inside — a rustle of movement.
I carefully swung the bag off my back to my front so it wouldn't make a sound, and slid the letter opener into the side pocket. I listened hard, but no further sound came from inside the room.
I hesitated for a moment — leave it and check another room, or deal with this suspicious one?
Who's behind the door?
One of the members?
The killer?
In the tension, I carefully rewound my memory and recalled the club president heading upstairs. After a brief consideration of her condition, I knocked.
"It's Lee Han-seong. Open the door."
"…"
…Click.
A moment later I heard the lock disengage. The door itself stayed shut, so I waited, then pushed it open. Across the room, in the far corner, stood the club president.
I looked at her — one cheek still flushed red. Behind her was a bookcase packed with volumes of every kind.
A study.
A place with a very high chance of holding a survivor's record.
I looked at her across the room with its large, dust-coated rug. More precisely, I looked at the thick book in her hands. Before she could notice what I was staring at, I snapped my gaze back to her face.
"What are you doing in here alone with the door locked?"
The president opened her mouth in a trembling voice.