CH 69

Hawoo studied the piece of clothing again when I said that. It was worn out and old, so he must not have noticed it at first, but there was clearly a spot where it looked like someone had torn it open near the chest. It was damage that couldn’t have happened naturally with time.

A shirt that had a long tear in the chest and a black strain that radiated from that tear.

“Whoa!” Hawoo must have come to the exact same realization as I did because he yelled as he threw the shirt back into the box. This time, there was nobody who asked why he did that.

Raehee swallowed nervously and then said out loud what everyone in the room had thought of. “That… isn’t a knife mark, is it? Right? Then the child who was wearing that shirt… must have…”

They probably died.

Raehee’s voice shook. “How is this a hint about the exit?”

Who knew?

While we all held our tongues in silence, I answered her question in my head—the shirt of a seven-year-old who was stabbed to death with a knife, how that was a hint pointing to the exit. I scowled at the clothes shoved in the box.

I also had no idea how this could become a hint to the exit at all, even though I figured out who the clothes belonged to.

It was obvious why I found the clothes familiar. I had seen that shirt before. I saw it in the mansion that I was trapped in when I was younger. It was the Child’s clothes. The Child with their wild hair and skinny body was wearing that shirt.

I stepped back and looked around the room again. What I saw was a view far from what I saw in the mansion back in my dream. However, I knew that this mansion had already been remodeled once. We were told that the mansion was given a new outer appearance to cover its old appearance.

An old building, the rooms, freshly wallpapered walls, and the new furniture that filled the rooms. The hallways were renovated so its former appearance was unrecognizable.

“…” I ended up looking at Woorim, who was standing in the corner of the room.

He had stopped looking through the mannequins and had stuck one hand in his pocket as he watched us. His flashlight was pointed to the ground. The light that illuminated our feet was too bright. I had no idea what face he was making as he watched us.

“Hey…” I was hesitating on what to call him, but all of a sudden, I heard a loud bang. I looked up at the ceiling. I wasn’t the only one who looked up. Before we figured out the source of the sound, Hawoo yelled, “It’s not safe here!”

Really, what kind of person was the owner of this building?

Objects started to drop successively from the ceiling that we thought was oddly high. They must have been quite heavy because every time something landed, we felt tremors at our feet. Some objects embedded themselves into the delicate floor.

People screamed and flashed their lights at the objects on the floor. The lights trembled dizzyingly and illuminated miscellaneous objects—unusable steel bars, a crumpled old neon sign, a very old piano, a small drawer, and a broken cuckoo clock. Thud, thud, thud.

The junk that was raining down from the ceiling felt like phlegm that this house was spitting down at us. After its transformation, it was like it was pouring out all the old and useless leftovers. Most of the junk and leftover building materials fell at the center of the room.

The shock of the plummeting items caused the closet and the changing room against the wall to fall forward. There were shattering sounds from the next room, so the old cabinets also must have toppled over and the dishes all cracked. The sound of breaking glass and people screaming melded together, and the room instantly became pandemonium.

“It’s dangerous. Let’s get out of here!” Thunk, thunk, thunk, as the sound continued, a cloud of dirt and dust started to fill the room. Junk wasn’t the only thing that was falling from the ceiling. Small rocks and sand also came down. Following Hawoo’s shout, Raehee ran toward the door.

Hyehyun grabbed my arm and shouted, “Haeseo, you too! Hurry!”

However, I yanked my arm away from his grasp. Hyehyun looked at me in surprise and called me back. I immediately turned my eyes to Woorim, looking beyond the falling objects.

Before the junk started to fall over our heads, Woorim was already standing apart from the group, far from the door. He had no choice but to stand there, isolated. The flashlight was still pointed downward. I had no idea what face he was making.

However…

“Haeseo!” Hyehyun shouted at me.

I got a weird feeling that if I separated from Woorim here, I would never see him again.