CH 36

“I don’t want that.” Before I could even answer, Woorim replied, which I didn’t expect. I felt a bit embarrassed that I had opened my mouth to say that I didn’t want to do it. Woorim looked at Seogeung with his bright smile still plastered on his face.

Seogeung looked taken aback because he must not have expected Woorim to shoot that suggestion down instantly. Usually, one couldn’t bring oneself to be harsh to a smiling person, but Woorim’s smile was on a far different level. There was something about his face that made even me pass over things.

“I’ve never planned anything like this with Haeseo before. No matter how we act, I think we’d be so awkward that people would realize immediately. Besides, isn’t it better for a good actor to play the role of the traitor? I think people with more experience than me would be able to handle that role better,” Woorim said as he scanned the people in the room who appeared to have more experience.

As Woorim’s gaze landed on them, the people who agreed with Seogeung instantly shut their mouths. They too didn’t want to play the role of the bad guy. It was more so because those people would have a hard time finding work if their personas had any sort of flaw.

Woorim shrugged. “Nobody is willing to take the role?”

“Well… I guess we can decide that later. We don’t know anything yet at this point anyway. There could be scarier traps downstairs than expected… After all, they renovated the mansion so we wouldn’t find the exit that easily.” When the atmosphere seemed to grow a bit awkward, the host intervened. He must have thought that continuing this conversation would be dangerous because he completely changed the topic. “Then again, what really is the mansion with 101 doors? I searched it up before and found a lot of stories, but which of those is real? I read that all the rooms look different. Do you think the rooms here would have taken inspiration from them and each been made differently?”

This was an excellent change of topic. Thanks to that, we could start chatting about the rooms from the mansion. Among those were stories that I had never heard before. I thought I had read most of the stories on the web, but apparently, that wasn’t the case.

“A golden door? Then would gold pour out of that room if you opened that door?” The man named Hawoo Kang, who looked disinterested until now, mumbled in a way that made it seem like he was talking to himself out loud.

The one who mentioned the golden door first was the sportscaster, Raehee Park. She had her long straight hair tied up in a ponytail and was wearing a suit that accentuated her waist. Despite her cold impression, she seemed to have a bright personality. “I heard that the person who saw that door never opened it! They said that the moment they grabbed the doorknob, they woke up or something. Oh, isn’t that too bad? The original poster said that they would have been able to win the first prize of the lottery if they had opened it.”

‘Lies,’ I thought to myself as I heard that last part. The person who said they saw the golden door made it all up. One needed to go into a room to escape the mansion. They couldn’t just wake up from the dream by simply grabbing a door handle. In the first place, that mansion was…

“You can only go there when you’re on death’s doorstep. There’s no way.” Someone mumbled quietly. It wasn’t me. I turned my head toward the voice.

The person who said that was Goyeon Lee.

She was merely listening to the people chat with her head looking down. She looked a bit vacant, and her face was deathly pale. Her shoulders were as slumped as mine and she kept suppressing her depressed sighs. I observed her for a moment before turning my head away.

My heart pounded loudly.

I remembered that she bawled her eyes out suddenly after hearing that I was an outcast in middle school. She couldn’t even look me in the face properly. She said that she just remembered when she had a hard time back in the day, but could one really break out crying like that so abruptly because of that? At the time, everyone in the studio believed her. I also recalled that, although she had minor roles with brief appearances, she was still an actress who acted for a long time.

It would be a piece of cake for her to make up an excuse.