Mystery Drama — The Unexplored Area
I suppose I ought to explain exactly what the Unexplored Area is.
The Unexplored Area is, quite literally, the zone that has yet to be explored.
Its opposite is the Explored Area.
But don’t get the wrong idea—calling it the Explored Area doesn’t mean every inch of it has been mapped out and safely settled. It simply means we’ve been inside, and we’ve gotten a decent handle on the paths and the terrain.
In other words… the Explored Area is where we’re allowed to go. The Unexplored Area is where we can’t.
I’ll get to why we can’t enter the Unexplored Area in a moment.
I’d appreciate it if you didn’t curse me out for the wordplay. I didn’t come up with the names—Ha Seonyu did.
Personally, I think “Impassable Exploration Zone” would have been far more accurate… but Seonyu is a blockhead with an iron will, so we ended up stuck with this nonsense.
That’s enough about the names. Let me describe what the place is actually like.
In the Unexplored Area the plants grow so thick—so grotesquely enormous—that they choke everything, and ancient, crumbling concrete structures tangle together like a spider’s web, cutting visibility down to almost nothing.
But the rough terrain isn’t the real problem.
The real problem is the mutated wild dogs that nest deep inside.
It would have been nice if those dogs were the cute puppies you see in picture books… but unfortunately, they’re nothing of the sort.
Their frames are far larger than any ordinary dog’s, and they’re vicious—closer in temperament to wolves or hyenas than to anything domestic.
Their sizes vary wildly; Mama once warned us that some individuals grow to truly massive proportions.
When we were little, Mama always taught us with that strict face of hers.
“You must never cross beyond the barbed wire. The dogs out there are extremely aggressive. They see people as prey—dangerous predators.”
Maybe that’s why.
Along the boundary that divides the Unexplored Area from the Explored Area runs a dizzying stretch of electrified barbed wire that towers well above a person’s height.
Who built that fence, or when it was installed in the greenhouse, is something we have no way of knowing…
But right now it serves as the single most important, absolute barrier protecting the lives of us six brothers and sisters.
Of course, right in the middle of the fence stands one heavy iron gate that lets you pass between the two zones.
The gate, however, is a one-way, rock-solid design that only a human can open. No beast, no matter how clever, could ever work the latch and force its way through.
On top of that, any physical attempt to climb the fence or push through the gate is instantly picked up by sensors linked to the mansion’s system, which then blares a warning. Just like the log record Woohee-nuna checked earlier.
Thanks to that fence and those sensors, the mutated wild dogs have never once managed to invade the Explored Area.
So what about the Explored Area we’re walking through right now?
Compared to the Unexplored Area, this place is a paradise overflowing with resources.
The prime example is the Meat Warehouse—the solid backbone of our food supply.
“Hey, Jin Woohyun. Watch the pipes under your feet. Cutting around toward the Meat Warehouse should be faster.”
Seonyu took the lead, vaulting lightly over a massive ventilation structure and waving me on.
“Got it.”
The Meat Warehouse is one of the most important and largest sites inside the Explored Area.
Open the doors of that hangar-like building and you find every kind of meat vacuum-sealed in silver packaging, stacked all the way to the ceiling.
Beef, pork, chicken, lamb—names of animals we only ever saw in fairy-tale books as kids—perfectly preserved, never rotting. We siblings make regular trips here to haul back whatever meat we need.
Woohee-nuna once seriously calculated the inventory. According to her, even if the six of us threw a meat party every single day for the next hundred years, we still wouldn’t finish it all. It’s that overwhelming.
In short, it’s the single most dominant and vital base for the greenhouse’s food self-sufficiency.
There’s one more place I can’t leave out.
The Daily Necessities Warehouse!
Located a little ways from the Meat Warehouse, this one is piled mountain-high with every scrap of junk you need to live: everyday shampoo, harsh detergents, clothes packed by size, soft bedding, heavy frying pans and other kitchen tools.
Whenever household supplies ran low, Seonyu and I always paired up and came here to haul loads.
That doesn’t mean these warehouses stock every single thing we can imagine. Plenty of items are missing.
That’s when we step out beyond the safe warehouses into the real exploration zones—the true uncharted stretches inside the Explored Area itself, where paths haven’t been properly cleared and old structures still threaten to collapse.
The battered washing machine and the big dryer on the first floor of our house? After Mama stopped and fell asleep, Seonyu and I found them by chance while exploring… then spent days grunting and hauling them back, lashed with rope. Incredible loot.
I have no idea who left all these things scattered like hidden treasures in every corner of the greenhouse, but they were endlessly useful.
Same goes for the white medicine boxes or specialized tools we sometimes stumbled on in the underbrush. Valuable finds like those almost never appear in the regularly stocked warehouses, so every discovery made life in the mansion noticeably richer and helped us more than I can say.
Rustle, thwack!
Seonyu hacked at a thicket of giant leaves with her machete, clearing a path.
“We’re here. See the fence over there?”
Where her finger pointed, at the very edge of the Explored Area, the green plants suddenly cut off and a bleak gray air hung over the boundary line.
A dense, thick wall of barbed wire soared toward the sky.
Hmmmm———hmm—
The faint hum of current flowing through the wires pricked at our ears.
“The iron gate… it’s cracked open a little.”
I swallowed hard and muttered.
The heavy gate that should have been shut tight was half-ajar, as if someone had shoved it open in a hurry and gone through.
Just as Woohee-nuna had said—Min Hari had definitely gone inside.
“That crazy bitch. Seriously, no fear at all—why the hell would she….”
Seonyu clenched her machete and ground her teeth.
We exchanged a look. There was no more time to waste.
I took one deep breath, then pushed the heavy iron gate open a step ahead of Seonyu and set foot into the dark maw of the Unexplored Area.
We started tracking Hari’s trail at once.
Luckily, the path she’d taken was easy enough to spot. The thick grass and leaves had been swept in one direction, and slender vines and branches lay broken here and there.
Hari had never been the athletic type. A guy like me and Seonyu, hardened by years of exploration, should be able to catch up before long.
The problem was the dogs.
If they caught us, we were finished.
So we moved with our voices as low as possible, careful not to reach their ears. The only sounds in the silent forest were the two of us slicing through plants with our big machetes.
Swish, swish.
After pushing on for quite a while… once Seonyu judged we had left the most dangerous stretch behind, she finally spoke.
“So why the hell did that girl Min Hari come all the way out here?”
The words came out blunt, but worry weighed far heavier than irritation.
Of course the reason she’d run away… well, the guess was painfully obvious.
“It’s all my fault, isn’t it.”
When I answered, Seonyu snorted.
“Good that you know.”
A moment later her voice softened a little.
“But it’s not only your fault. Hari’s the one who broke the rules, not you.”
“………….”
“No matter how miserable she felt, if she just bottles it up alone, there’s no way for us to help.”
She wasn’t wrong. I nodded bitterly.
“Yeah……. I was going to apologize properly again this morning.”
Seonyu cut in coldly.
“Better hope we find her in a state where she can still hear an apology.”
“What?”
“She even took a rope. How do we know she didn’t come out here to kill herself?”
Anger flared hot in my chest.
“Hey, even so—do you have to talk about family like that?”
Seonyu’s face hardened. She snapped back as if she were the one who had the right to be furious.
“Then what about us being out here right now? Does that mean nothing?”
“…….”
“Jin Woohyun, get your head straight. This is the Unexplored Area. Anything can happen here at any second.”
She clenched her machete so hard her knuckles whitened.
“No matter how sad or hurt you are, you don’t get to drag other people into danger because of it.”
I had nothing to say. She was absolutely right.
Even while we worried about Hari, we were risking our own lives to find her. If we ran into a pack of those dogs, there was no guarantee any of us would make it back.
After a long silence Seonyu murmured in a tiny voice.
“Why didn’t she even tell me she was going……”
When I glanced over, faint tears had gathered at the corners of her eyes.
I didn’t ask anything. The reason she’d been so angry all this time was clear enough from those water droplets alone.
We moved forward again without a word, following the direction Hari had taken—checking flattened grass, brushed leaves, broken twigs one by one as we tore through the forest.
Then the trail that had continued so steadily suddenly vanished.
A small swamp stretched in front of us.
In that murky water and mud there was no crushed grass, no swept leaves—nothing. We could only guess she had crossed it; which way she had come out was impossible to tell.
Seonyu and I decided to rest for a bit in front of the swamp.
We’d already walked a long time; our arms and legs felt heavy as lead. Luckily we still hadn’t met any dogs, so recovering our strength here was the smart call. We needed the stamina to run if they showed up.
We shared the water we’d brought and dropped onto a broad rock ledge.
“…………”
“…………”
Neither of us spoke for a while.
No birdsong, no insect chirps. Only the sound of swallowing water rang out unnaturally loud.
Gulp, gulp.
Sitting there in silence, the question that had been nagging at the back of my mind rose to the surface again.
“Hey, Ha Seonyu.”
“What?”
She pulled her mouth from the water bottle and looked at me.
I hesitated, then asked.
“Do you really think Hari came all the way out here because she wanted to give up on herself?”
“What’s that supposed to mean all of a sudden?”
“That she walked into the Unexplored Area because she wanted to disappear somewhere no one could find her.”
Seonyu didn’t answer; she just stared at me.
I started laying out the thoughts that had been circling in my head.
“Hari acts on emotion sometimes, sure, but she’s not the kind of person who’d deliberately put us in danger.”
Something shifted in Seonyu’s eyes. She seemed to think I had a point.
“If she really wanted to vanish without hurting anyone… there’s no reason she’d come here.”
“Why?”
“There’s a sensor at the entrance to the Unexplored Area. The moment someone goes in, the mansion knows right away.”
Hari knew that better than anyone. The second she stepped through, she would have expected us to come looking for her.
I bit my lip hard. It was a conversation I didn’t want to have, but right now we had to weigh every possibility.
“If suicide was really the goal…… there were plenty of cleaner, more rational ways.”
Seonyu’s eyebrows twitched.
“For example?”
“For example, the lake in the Explored Area.”
My voice came out heavy.
“Strap something heavy to yourself and jump in—you disappear without a trace. Or just keep walking in the opposite direction from the mansion.”
Go far enough the other way and you hit the giant concrete wall that surrounds the greenhouse—a place almost no one ever sets foot, where the plants grow monstrously thick.
“If she died out there it would take forever to find her. Bad luck, and we might never find her at all.”
Seonyu fell quiet, thinking. Then she slowly nodded.
“Yeah. You’re right.”
She looked straight at me with a serious face.
“Hey. But.”
“What?”
“Listening to you… it feels like the whole idea that she went off to kill herself was wrong from the start.”
“What do you mean?”
Seonyu rested her chin on her knees.
“If Hari’s gone, who’s going to take care of the crops in the Cultivation Area?”
“…….”
“Those plants are like her own kids. You really think she’d dump all of them and go die just because you dumped her?”
Even as she said it she frowned deeply, as if she couldn’t quite buy her own words.
“Thinking about it again, the logic jump is way too big.”
It did seem that way.
“Yeah.”
Because it wasn’t only the plants in the Cultivation Area that would be in trouble if Hari disappeared.
“Without Hari we can’t even eat a proper meal. We’d be stuck chewing warehouse meat for the rest of our lives.”
No one inside this greenhouse was as skilled or as devoted as Hari when it came to planting seeds, raising them, and harvesting. She knew that better than anyone.
“The Hari we know would never want a situation that irresponsible.”
“I think so too.”
So the problem circled right back to the starting point.
If she hadn’t come here to die, then what exactly had brought her into the Unexplored Area?
And more than anything else—
“Then why the hell did she bring a rope?”
Seonyu had no answer either.
A damp, fishy wind swept across the swamp.
I screwed the cap back on the water bottle, set it down, and stared blankly at the mud where Hari’s trail had vanished.
If it wasn’t suicide…
Then what on earth had Hari been trying to do out here?
No matter how hard I wrung my brain, no decent answer came.
“Let’s go.”
Seonyu stood up from the rock first.
“Sitting here rolling rocks around won’t give us answers. We just have to find her and ask her face to face.”
“Yeah. Let’s.”