The Voice Recorder and Suspicion
Static crackled endlessly through the recording, and the audio quality was terrible.
Even so, it was impossible not to hang on every word of the young woman's urgent voice.
The woman's voice cut out for a moment.
Through the crackling static came the sound of someone forcing down a breath.
The monster I'd seen just a short while ago rose in my mind — far too vividly for something glimpsed in the dark.
That black shape clinging to a corner wall. The monster that looked like a giant millipede stood upright on two feet.
Crackle.
So the thing in the water really was a monster after all.
The millipede-like creature we'd seen was something different from the Water Monster.
Then was the millipede-like one… something a person had turned into?
"…Water?"
Han Yuna looked puzzled, so I paused the recorder and told her what I'd seen on the way here.
That when I'd angled the lantern slightly, I thought I'd seen two large, glowing eyes beneath the water's surface.
"I see. Then I guess this recorder is at least somewhat reliable. The insect monster charged at us the moment we tried to enter the room, too."
Hearing that, I started the recorder again.
At those words, I found myself looking at Han Yuna without meaning to. She was looking at me, too.
Crackle.
The static stretched out long.
Just when I thought the recording had ended—
Crackle.
A wave of static swallowed her voice whole. Then the final words continued, so faint they seemed about to break apart.
Crackle-crackle—
Click.
The recorder's playback indicator went dark.
…What the hell was that?
I'd been listening carefully, but the last part left me tilting my head.
The person you woke up with. That was me and Han Yuna.
But… Han Yuna was the protagonist. The clear, unmistakable protagonist planted right at the center of this horror story I'd been thrown into.
So those words couldn't possibly apply to her.
Either the woman who made the recording was wrong, or there was some other condition we didn't know about. Or else…
I was about to say something when my eyes met Han Yuna's.
She'd looked at me after hearing those final words, too.
She awkwardly lifted the corner of her mouth. Honestly, it was so faint I wasn't even sure she'd smiled.
…No way?
Was she actually suspicious of me?
Over this one recorder alone?
"…."
"…."
Whatever camaraderie or bond we'd built up until now felt like it had been rinsed clean away by ice-cold water.
No — maybe even that had been a delusion on my part, born from receiving her help. Maybe I'd gotten drunk on her kindness and convinced myself we were closer than we really were.
How long had we even known each other, anyway…?
The moment that fact hit me afresh, the distance between Han Yuna and me felt several steps farther than it had been just moments before.
In the strangely awkward atmosphere, Han Yuna spoke first.
"For now… should we look around and see if there's anything else?"
"…Yeah."
Even that felt more awkward. The sense that we were both trying to move on as if nothing had happened, without either of us saying a single word about those final lines we'd just heard.
But it was too awkward a situation to bring anything up, so for the time being I decided to search the area as she'd suggested.
I set the recorder down on the desk and headed toward the wall.
In the corner stood a metal storage locker about as tall as a person. At a glance I'd assumed it was where staff kept their clothes, but…
When I opened it, instead of protective gear, a massive hammer sat right there in plain view.
A heavy sledgehammer of the kind you'd only see on a construction site.
Next to it lay two baseball bats — both metal.
Weapons that seemed a little out of place for a Staff Break Room.
What were these left here for?
Emergency use? To fight monsters?
I tried to lift the hammer, but just shifting the handle a little made my arm tense up hard. It was seriously heavy.
With this body, swinging it properly was out of the question — even carrying it around would be difficult.
In the end I gave up on the hammer and pulled out one of the baseball bats.
The metal bat was usable.
"There are some weapons over here."
At my words, Han Yuna looked up. She studied the bat in my hands for a moment, then came over to the locker.
"There's a hammer, too."
Han Yuna grabbed the hammer's handle right away. And without any visible effort, she hoisted it up in one smooth motion.
"…."
As expected of the protagonist… was that the right way to put it?
It didn't look like a weight an ordinary woman could lift that casually with one hand.
Han Yuna tested the hammer's balance, shifting it lightly in her grip, then set it back in the locker.
"It is pretty heavy, though. Carrying it around and swinging it freely would be rough."
…So it was heavy after all.
"What about you?"
Han Yuna turned her head to look at me.
"I think I could carry one around too."
"Huh? For real?"
Han Yuna stared at me like she hadn't expected that.
…Did I really look that frail?
So my impression of this body as delicate and soft hadn't been a delusion. Other people saw it the same way.
Of course, swinging the hammer freely was impossible — but the baseball bat was doable.
I picked up the metal bat and gave it a few whooshing swings.
Watching me, Han Yuna's eyes widened in surprise.
But was it pure surprise alone? Not quite.
How to put it… there was a pinch of unease mixed in. A subtle wariness I couldn't quite explain flickered in her gaze.
"…."
"…."
I set the bat on the floor as if I hadn't noticed a thing, and Han Yuna didn't ask any further questions.
We started searching the room again.
Then Han Yuna pulled something from deep inside a desk drawer.
"Found this, too."
In her hand was a small pen that gave off a fluorescent glow.
Glow pens — the monsters couldn't see them, right?
Watching her find it and look pleased only made me more uneasy. It meant she was taking the recorder's claims at face value.
At least for now, she was closer to following the information on it than questioning it.
But…
Could we really trust it?
Thinking it over again, the recorder's contents had more than a few strange points.
Especially that line.
Don't trust the companion you met the moment you opened your eyes.
Anyone else might not know better, but I knew that statement made no sense. Because I knew Han Yuna was the protagonist.
…Was this a monster's scheme?
The thought suddenly struck me.
What if a monster had pretended to be human and made the recording?
If people could turn into monsters, why couldn't a monster imitate a person?
Once I thought about it that way, a lot of things seemed off.
First of all, the recording said nothing about an escape route.
Of course, the person who left the recording might never have found a way out. But for someone trapped in a place like this, wouldn't the escape method be the very first thing they'd want to know?
And yet there hadn't been a single word about it.
What if it really was a monster?
What if its goal was to make Han Yuna and me suspicious of each other, and ultimately drive us apart?
The glow pens might not actually be tools for leaving traces the monsters couldn't see. I had to consider the possibility that they were objects that attracted monsters instead.
Wait.
Then maybe I could use a glow pen to prove I wasn't a monster…
Ah.
I remembered — near the end of the recording, it had specifically said that the monster you woke up with was one that even tricks like glow pens wouldn't work on.
…How meticulously planned could this get?
Han Yuna and Kim Seokhun searched every corner of the room they could. After setting aside anything useful, a strange silence settled over the break room.
Han Yuna sat with her back against the wall, slowly rolling the glow pen between her fingers. The contents of the recording she'd heard earlier kept circling through her mind.
Don't trust the companion you met the moment you opened your eyes. It's a monster.
At first she'd thought it was absurd.
Every reaction Kim Seokhun had shown so far had been thoroughly human. The face of pure terror when he encountered a monster. The way his eyes trembled, frozen with fear. The look of relief when the tension finally broke.
By any measure, he was unmistakably human.
But what if he really was a monster?
Once she assumed that, the odd points weren't just one or two.
The way a man of his build swung a bat around so easily, for one. And honestly, even their first conversation had felt a little off, hadn't it? That subtle sense that their perceptions of things didn't quite line up.
Han Yuna wrote all of it up and posted it to the gallery.
Clearly, the gallery's consensus was that they couldn't rule out the possibility he was a monster.
Had Han Yuna been staring at Kim Seokhun a little too intently while lost in thought?
Crouched in a corner of the room sorting through items, Kim Seokhun suddenly stopped moving.
He turned his head.
Kim Seokhun studied Han Yuna's face for a moment, then parted his lips as if hesitating. And carefully, he asked:
"You're… not suspicious of me, are you?"
After hearing that question, Han Yuna noticed something strange.
And she voiced the doubt right away.
"…You're not suspicious of me?"
"Huh?"
Kim Seokhun's pupils wavered with the look of someone who'd just realized his mistake.
From that reaction, Han Yuna felt the sense of wrongness once more.
Wasn't that strange in itself?
They'd both heard the recorder. The warning not to trust the person you'd opened your eyes with from the start applied to her just as much as it did to Kim Seokhun.
So it would be normal for him to be suspicious of her, too.
And yet until just now, he'd only been worried about the possibility of being suspected himself. As if the thought that Han Yuna could be a monster had never even crossed his mind.
Why?
Because he trusted her completely? Just because they'd been together for a few hours?
Then Kim Seokhun spoke in a strangely subdued voice.
"I just… trust you. Because you're the person who helped me…"
His expression was earnest. He almost looked like someone terrified of being abandoned — and with a face that already wore every emotion so openly, that anxiety came through even more vividly.
Han Yuna forcibly suppressed the thoughts that threatened to waver for a moment.
Think about this coldly.
Would an ordinary person, in a situation like this, drop every last suspicion just because the other person had helped them once?
…He trusts me that much?