CH 41

“Could I ask you something?” I asked cautiously as I read her face. Goyeon was about to say no, but I continued at the same time, “You’ve dreamed about it before, right? The mansion with 101 doors.”

When she heard my follow-up question, she bit down on her lips. Her brows knitted together resentfully, so even though she didn’t give me an answer, I could infer that she had dreamed about it before.

My heart was steady when Goyeon threw her flashlight in a fit of anger, but now, it started to flutter wildly. This was different from the deluge of fake testimonials all over the web. She had been to the mansion that I was trapped in a long time ago. I had a lot to ask about the mansion, but I had no idea how to start talking about it, so I hesitated. “Then…”

“Let me ask you something too,” Goyeon asked in a frigid voice after seeing that I was unable to continue. “What did you see back in that video?”

Her question made me speechless in a different way. She scanned me with her light from head to toe. I didn’t blink even as the bright light passed over my eyes.

She asked a second time, “What did you see on Yeonseon Ham that made you quit your work and run away?”

I took a few deep breaths. I tried to make a smiling face. “You… won’t like what you hear.”

“I’m the one who’ll decide that after hearing it.” Her obstinate face overlapped with the memory of Yeonseon’s face that I saw a long time ago at the recording studio. When he saw me trembling in fear, his eyes widened. Then he smiled slyly and shrugged. Wearing the face that I had always loved, he said, “Why? Is my face strange?”

‘Yeah, it’s weird. Very much so.’ The moment I saw his face, I felt an odd mix of despair, resentment, anger, and devastation. A chill ran down my spine, my entire body trembled like a leaf, and my legs gave in.

“Who are you? Why are you on Yeonseon?”

Why was that on Yeonseon? Why?

Snapping back to reality, I stared at Goyeon Lee. I saw the sincerity in her eyes as she waited for my reply. Whenever I thought back to that time, I felt like I was falling into a deep pit beyond the floor. All I could think of was that thing that made me run away from Yeonseon and try to distance myself from him. I swallowed dryly in my nervousness.

Unlike the rumors, the recording room ghost that caused an uproar on the internet was nothing much. Because…

“…Eyes.”

The ghost was Yeonseon himself.

“I saw black eyes.”

There was no need to reveal any ghost because it was simply Yeonseon himself.

Reflected in my eyes, the one singing in the recording studio was the same as my mother, the same as my classmate who committed suicide—it was Yeonseon with completely black eyes with no whites. “That thing” wore Yeonseon’s shell of a body as he calmly looked at me lovingly.

It would’ve been better if it was a grim reaper, Yeonseon.

* * *

“Oh…” I looked at the flashlight that was now a wreck and sighed deeply. It was the flashlight that Goyeon threw at me. Thankfully, the lightbulb was still intact, but the grip of the lamp was dented.

I somehow fitted together the plastic parts of the light, but the next issue was the batteries. There were none where there should be batteries. No wonder this felt lighter than mine.

I squatted down where the flashlight fell and scanned the area. But it was fruitless since I wasn’t a bat and couldn’t see anything in the dark.

I was hoping that it was rolling around nearby and felt around the floor. However, the only things that were in my reach were ripped-up sheet music, a dented triangle, and a castanet that was missing its other side. In the end, I gave up and stood up, brushing the dust off my hands.

I kept the flashlight in my hands. It was a useless piece of junk. I couldn’t test if it functioned properly, but I had no choice since Goyeon took my flashlight.

Besides, I could find a new battery by sheer luck by searching rooms. I recalled reading from the booklet we received before the shoot that there were rooms with hidden batteries.

It definitely wouldn’t be an easy feat to search through this many rooms in the dark. Even this room was dangerous to walk in the dark because of all the clutter on the ground. Another good idea was to stand in the hallway to wait for another person who came down to explore.

However, I dismissed that thought because my desire to search this building by myself was stronger.

“…” I sat on the edge of what I assumed was a desk and rubbed my right cheek, which was now quite warm. I only brushed it with my fingertips, but it throbbed, which surely meant that I was slapped pretty seriously. It would probably take some time for the swelling to go down. The inside of my mouth must have also been torn because I could smell blood at the back of my nose.