Hide and Seek (2)
A flame bloomed in the dark. Warmth seeped slowly into Han Mir's body. Everyone else was watching the fire. He was not. He stared straight through the darkness, unblinking.
The flames spread their light in a widening circle, and a soft wash of moonlight spilled down from the sky. Big timber cabins. A cornfield that ran on without end. It felt like they had been dropped into some forgotten American farm town.
The players sat on logs in a ring around the bonfire, as if someone had called a campfire gathering.
"Whoa! A campfire!"
The others stayed frozen where they were, silence clamped over them by fear. Only Han Areum was grinning like the sun, bouncing around the fire. Then she dashed over to Han Mir and beamed up at him.
"Oppa, do you have marshmallows? Areum wants marshmallows!"
"Hmm. I'll take a look. There might be some around."
"Yay! This is the best!!!"
The moment Han Mir and Han Areum stood to leave, Lee Ji-han shot to his feet and caught the boy by the wrist.
"W-wait! Splitting off on your own is dangerous right now!"
"Huh? What are you talking about? Going off alone? You don't see this little dragon?"
"Rawr! I'm a dragon!!"
"N-no, that's not what I— wouldn't it be better to stick together as a group instead of wandering off one by one? The killer is coming!"
"H-hiiik!!"
At the word killer, Kim Min-jeong's eyes filled and she started to shake.
"Then tag along if you want."
"Hmph. What a stupid thing to say."
Kang Hyun-soo rose, pushing his glasses up with a middle finger.
"Hyun-soo?"
"Tsk. This is why playing with brain-dead trolls is such a pain. Can you not tell just by looking? Right now, the ones who move first have the better odds. Even if someone dies, it's only one person. You go solo, hunt for an exit, get caught — still just one corpse."
"B-but if we stay together we can fight the killer—"
"Yeahhh~ no-name-college freshman~ even the way you think is peak third-rate university. Tsk tsk."
"What is that supposed to—"
"Yeahhh~ I don't talk to old farts, hopeless bitches, or no-name college kids~"
Kang Hyun-soo let one corner of his mouth curl into a thin smile and vanished. Lee Ji-han sat there with his mouth open, staring at the dirt as if it might tell him what to do.
"Mmph mmph mmph! Mmmph!!"
Do Gwang-sik, the teddy bear, started shouting through the costume in a frantic muffled rush, jabbing a plush paw in one direction. The way he was pointing led into a dark so complete it swallowed the next step.
"Why are you acting like that, mister? I can't see anything."
"Mmph mmph mmph!!"
The others frowned at him — and then they saw it. A pair of red eyes flashing open in that black.
Killing intent poured off them, the kind that made your knees want to fold just from meeting it.
Wwwrrrreeeeeee—!!
The snarl of a chainsaw came with it, and every sleeping survival instinct in the circle sat bolt upright.
"Hiiiiek!!!"
They understood the killer was coming and scattered in a blind panic. They still had a good ten minutes of prep time before that thing would even reach the bonfire, but none of them knew that. All they knew was the footage they had been shown, and the single thought hammering through their heads: I am not dying like those people. Their legs did the rest.
All of them except Han Mir and Han Areum.
"Huh? Where's everybody going?"
"Unbelievable. They were the ones talking about sticking together."
The two of them snorted and strolled off at their own pace.
"Hopeless troll bastards. Stay with people like that and you're guaranteed to die. Especially the Lee Ji-han type. They run their mouths and they're always the first ones to drop."
Kang Hyun-soo muttered to himself, eyes cutting from shadow to shadow.
WEEEEEE—!
A siren ripped through the air. He flinched hard and bolted into the nearest cabin.
Bunny's voice rolled down from the sky, announcing that the hunt had begun. Kang Hyun-soo swallowed hard and felt his heart trying to punch its way out of his chest.
He had put as much distance as he could between himself and the bonfire, mapping the killer's likely path in his head. The others had left later than he had, which meant they were either hiding closer to that thing or already out searching. The odds of landing on its route as prey were vanishingly low. Even if he never found an escape item, the rest of them would die on their own and the game would end.
I'm safe.
Kang Hyun-soo grinned and started tearing through the cabin he had ducked into.
It was an ordinary little shack — so small it was embarrassing to call it a house. Cramped as a studio apartment, narrow enough that he wondered if it was actually a storage shed. Inside there was nothing but a single bed. If the killer walked in, the only place to hide was the most obvious spot in the world: under the mattress. A house with the worst possible layout.
He still didn't leave. There was a small box under the bed.
That's right. You can't fool eyes that have played this kind of game more times than I can count.
Even with the pressure of not knowing when he might die sitting on his shoulders, the hit of dopamine from finding an item was almost enough to make him laugh. Heart hammering, he opened the box.
"Hm? What is this?"
There was no item inside that would buy him time against the killer. Just two old, worn scrolls of paper. He unrolled them.
"A map?"
It was a detailed layout of the village. His eyes raced over every mark, devouring the information — then jerked to a stop.
A location stamped with a red X.
The cornfield. Specifically, a stretch of it that sat not far from the starting bonfire. His gut was screaming at him. Something central to this game was there. He hesitated, caught between two choices: play it safe and hunt for another way out, or risk the uncertain cornfield.
Wwwrrrreeeeeee!
The chainsaw snarled somewhere in the distance, hurrying his decision. If he lingered, the killer would find him.
Kang Hyun-soo made up his mind and stepped back outside. He swallowed, then deliberately took the dark path along the rear edges of the houses and started retracing his steps.
"Come on, come on, just give me something!"
"Mmph mmph mmph!"
Passing one of the cabins, he spotted Lee Ji-han and Do Gwang-sik inside, faces tight with panic as they tore the place apart. Do Gwang-sik could barely even get a drawer open in that teddy-bear suit.
"Idiots."
Kang Hyun-soo sneered. They couldn't even dream of the kind of play he was making right now. If this went well, he might even hard-carry the whole group out of here. The thought of their faces when they came begging made his mouth twitch all by itself.
Or I could just ditch all of them and walk out alone. Hmm. That Kim Min-jeong girl is pretty decent-looking. Wouldn't be the worst thing, keeping her on my arm.
He grinned through the whole cheap little fantasy, drunk on it.
I'm the protagonist of this game.
The thought locked into place. Kang Hyun-soo tightened his grip on the map and kept moving.
"Oppa, did you find the marshmallows?"
"No. Is there seriously nothing to eat around here? I'm starving."
He passed them on the way — the little kid and the self-proclaimed hero, Han Mir, strolling down the middle of the street and talking at full volume. Kang Hyun-soo let out a hollow laugh.
They're actually trying to get murdered.
He glared at Han Mir, then his eyes narrowed.
No.
Now he understood why that lunatic was out there waving himself around like a flag.
"Even I didn't think of that one. Vicious bastard. Heh."
The moment the killer showed, he was going to throw the kid out as a sacrifice. She couldn't fight back. All he had to do was pick her up and toss her.
Hero, his ass.
Was there anyone more rotten than that?
Kang Hyun-soo slipped on again, moving like a ninja — and then it happened.
"KYAAAAAAAH!"
Kim Min-jeong burst into the middle of the street screaming. She was already down, clutching a gash across her shoulder. Blood soaked through the white of her shrine maiden robes and mixed with the dirt. She tried to get her feet under her again and again, but her legs wouldn't hold.
"D-don't come! Stay away from me!"
Tears ran down her face. She was shaking so hard it looked like a seizure. A huge shadow fell over her, and Kang Hyun-soo's breath snagged in his throat.
The killer stood well over six and a half feet tall, grinning so wide his lipless mouth peeled back and showed every inch of his gums.
"S-someone help me! Please, somebody save me!!!"
Kim Min-jeong's raw, breaking scream went unanswered. No one stepped forward.
The killer's thick hand reached for her face. One of those hands looked big enough to close around her skull and crush it.
"Ghk—!"
He caught her by the throat and lifted her off the ground. She kicked at his face, raked her nails across his skin, anything to get free. The killer didn't even twitch. He just ran his tongue over his teeth.
That was when Kang Hyun-soo's eyes met Kim Min-jeong's.
"P-please… s-save…"
The words came out in a sob. Kang Hyun-soo's lips trembled. He moved, slowly. He turned his head away from the girl it had been locked on — and kept walking toward the cornfield.