CH 37

Act 5

The morning was like Erik Satie’s Gymnopédie no. 1.

It felt lonesome, tranquil, languid, and mysterious.

The simple repetitive melody seems easy-flowing and pastoral at first. However, Gymnopédie no. 1 is in fact supposed to be played slowly and painfully, lent et douloureux, according to the sheet music—as slowly and painfully as possible. So despite its brevity, some pianists sometimes take up to 10 to 15 minutes to perform the piece.

The melody stretches out, the heavy air hangs onto one’s feet and hands, the bulky body of time presses down heavily on one’s head.

And so, the resulting atmosphere makes one feel causeless, indistinct anxiety and tension.

The piece, progressing particularly slowly, feels like it could derail from the tracks of the sheet music at any time and become a wretched mess, and that convincingly realistic delusion distorts the existing piece by Satie and becomes cerebrally transmitted. The simple tune that repeats itself amplifies its meaning and brings about a kaleidoscope of inspiration.

This song, often used as a lullaby, made me imagine a killer’s morning.

I pictured a scene where a cold and dry-looking man with a mysterious grin on his face wiped the tool used in last night’s hunt with a dry cloth. On the corner of the bed he was sitting on, there would be a clear plastic bag containing a wrapped up, bloody corpse.

Following that, just like how the man would walk to the freezer to take out two frozen eyeballs and four ears, tossing them on a heated frying pan with oil to cook them, I washed my face and brushed my teeth while looking bored. In the mirror was the reflection of a youth in his twenties with bleary eyes. My face felt unfamiliar to me even though I saw it every morning.

After I finished my easily collapsible morning routine, I glanced at the clock on the wall.

It was 7:20 a.m.

It was the perfect time to have some breakfast then go downstairs. I inserted the new batteries into the flashlight that I had placed on the table and turned it on to test it. A stream of light brighter than the room’s ceiling light shot out against the wall. It didn’t look like it had any problems.

I wasn’t able to dream of anything last night.

After Yeonseon died, I felt like “dreams” had been deleted from my life. The only thing that adorned my subconscious overnight were memories in black and white as always. More than the Child I met while I wandered the mansion in my younger days, I was more desperate to not lose any moments with Yeonseon. I knew that I shouldn’t.

I carelessly changed clothes and went to the hall to find some food to fill my stomach. I thought it was quite early, but there was one more person in the central hall aside from me. It was Goyeon Lee. She didn’t seem to have much of an appetite like me because she only had some cereal and milk in her hands. As soon as her eyes met mine, she furrowed her brows.

“Good morning. You’re up early.” Since she was reluctant to approach me last time, I thought she would avoid me today. But for some reason, she glanced at the flashlight in my hands, then sat at the table in the hall. She poured cereal and milk into the small bowl. I watched her for a moment as she ate her cereal before heading to the kitchen.

Although it was morning and despite the number of people here, the building was incredibly quiet.

As I tapped the characteristic free-flowing and leisurely melody of the Gymnopédie, I searched the refrigerator. It was then that I realized why Goyeon chose to eat cereal with milk. There were a lot of food ingredients, but all of them needed to be cooked before being edible.

I ended up taking out a small carton of soy milk and shut the fridge door.

“Are you going to go downstairs?” When I went out to the hall, Goyeon, who had finished her bowl of cereal within that time, stood up and asked.

“Yes.”

“Let’s go together,” she said as she stared at me. Her lips were pressed firmly together, looking like she made a firm resolution to herself. I wasn’t too sure, but I could tell that she mustered up a lot of courage to ask to go together.

I nodded. “Sure.”

“Wait just a moment,” she said as she returned to the kitchen with her empty cereal bowl.

After she cleaned up after herself and went to her room to grab her flashlight, I blatantly stared at the closed-circuit camera hanging from the ceiling. The dark lens looked like the black eyes of a spider. I felt it observing me and Goyeon, clinging flush to the corner of the room.

* * *

The bottom of the stairs was pitch black, just like the production staff had told us earlier. It was a darkness that was inconceivable for the morning.

After the last step of the flight of stairs, there was no light at all, so Goyeon and I had to turn on our flashlights. There were dim, yellowish lights along the hallway, but it could only act as a pathfinder. It wasn’t enough to ward off the darkness cast on the hallway. A single candle was probably brighter than those lights.

The floors felt wooden because, with every step, there was a creaking sound much like that of an old school. Nobody would probably attempt it because it was so dark, but if someone ran on these creaky floors, I thought the floor might cave in. I shined the light around the hallway once and understood why the floors made that sound.