CH 88

“…” I thought back to the things that kept screeching downstairs and the mansion that you could only visit when you were standing at the brink of death. Were the things downstairs already dead, or were they things that were wandering at death’s doorstep just like I was? But one thing was sure—they didn’t have physical bodies.

Perhaps they were scratching at the walls and the floors, searching for the exit—just like I did as a child.

Thunk.

Just then, the wall that I had been pushing at caved in slightly.

“…?” I applied pressure steadily, and the wall continued to move forward. The entire wall was moving, so it probably wasn’t a button. It was a hidden door. I had to push harder as the accumulated dust created resistance. It groaned. I could start to make out what was beyond the revolving door embedded in the wall.

It was a room. Thankfully, nobody was there.

I quietly crossed over to the other room, being careful that Hyehyun couldn’t hear.

Act 13

As soon as I entered the room next door, I could tell immediately why there was no one in the room. The owner of the room was no longer here. It was the stylist’s room.

Because the room numbers on the top floors were random, it was hard to remember which room belonged to whom. My room was 105, and the next room was 305. So, I couldn’t remember exactly the identity of my next-door neighbor.

The only reason I could tell that this was Goyeon’s stylist’s room was because of her belongings. I could tell that this was a woman’s room for sure because of the lipstick and skincare bottles on the vanity. There were three women in our group—the dead Goyeon, her stylist, and Raehee Park.

Raehee was in her room, so it was between the remaining two. The coat on the hanger was one that I saw Goyeon’s stylist wearing on the first day, so I could deduce that this was her room.

The missing stylist was found as a corpse over Goyeon’s dead body. This was the room of a dead person. I swallowed nervously and looked around. Even if it was a woman’s room, there was nothing very different from mine.

Bathroom, table and chair, bed, and…

“…Huh?” Just then, I noticed something off from this room view. I wasn’t sure if I should call it a weird hunch, but I could tell there was a difference between this room and mine. It wasn’t simply because the room was filled with her stuff. Something that should have been here was missing.

Blanket and pillow.

There was no blanket or pillow on the bed. The fitted sheet and mattress topper were practically sewn to the mattress. I walked over and observed the surroundings.

I didn’t notice at first, but upon looking closer, I noticed something weird. There was an outline on the floor directly below the bed. Perhaps I could even call it a rift. I knocked on the floor—it sounded hollow. There was nothing beneath the floor.

I looked around the room again. I noticed another strange thing. This time, I found something that shouldn’t have been there. There was an ornament hanging on the wall.

Each room was designed similarly. The rooms only had the basics and no decorations—a simple and bland room. My room had no wall décor, and I guessed that other rooms were the same.

It didn’t look like something that Goyeon’s stylist brought. It was stuck on the wall and wouldn’t come off. I pushed on the hanging object.

Clunk.

Then, something surprising happened. “What the hell?”

The floor under the bed flipped. The bed was bolted on the floor and the whole set-up turned full circle. The large bed disappeared under the floor before reappearing. I stood frozen as I stared at the mattress, the bed with no blanket, and pillow.

“Goyeon’s stylist disappeared,” Raehee had said. She was holding onto the doorknob and didn’t enter the room.

“Goyeon’s stylist disappeared.” Everyone was outside at that time because Hawoo found the corpses in the elevator…

My thoughts were cut off there.

The hallway grew noisy. Those who went downstairs must have come back up. I could vaguely hear the voices of Seohang, Hawoo, and Seogeung. Listening closely to what they were saying, it seemed like they couldn’t find Seoyoon in the end. To the disappointed people, Hyehyun said a few empty words, “You can go back to search for him later.”

I quickly glanced at the clock on the wall. It was 9:40.

It was probably evening. When I asked Hyehyun what the elevator was like, he said that it was no different from the morning. If it was 9:40 in the morning of the next day, Hyehyun would have answered differently, that it was no different than yesterday.

A lot of time had passed, but not too much had gone by. I could make it if I hurried. But there were a lot of things that I needed to deal with before I went. I needed to erase the seeds of doubt that Hyehyun planted about Woorim.

I couldn’t delay any further, so I opened the door and stepped out. The people in the hallway saw me and all looked surprised. The most shocked one was Hyehyun. “W-what…? Haeseo?”

Hyehyun shone the light in my face and the room I came from. “H-how did you come out from there?”

The items stacked in front of my door were quite the sight. There were large bags of flour, equally large bags of rice, and boxes of beverages. A mountain of heavy yet movable objects was piled in front of my room. It seemed like all the things that were stored in the kitchen were all brought over.

No wonder the door wouldn’t budge. I thought that someone might have dragged a refrigerator, but they didn’t go that far.

“Haeseo, how did you…? You should have been in your own room,” Raehee asked, her face drained of blood. Everyone must have had the same doubts then. I looked at the faces in the hallway. All the survivors were here—Hyehyun, Hawoo, Seogeung, Raehee, and even Seohang.

Looking at them, I could start to understand why Woorim was suspected of being in league with the film producer. I was wondering how they jumped to that conclusion, and unsurprisingly, Hyehyun probably wasn’t the only instigator.

I frowned and said, “There was a hidden door, one that connected this room to mine.”

Seogeung stomped on the floor and yelled, “This b*stard! This guy is the rat after all, isn’t he? How does he know about a hidden door that wasn’t even on the map?”

He still showed an irrational reaction to whatever I said. Seogeung came over and shook me by the collar. “I knew this antisocial f*cker would be the one. I knew he was suspicious!”

When we had all just arrived at the mansion, some people would try to stop him, but nobody would do that now. The rest of the group merely glanced nervously between me and Seogeung while holding onto their suspicions.

“Haeseo, how did this happen?” Even Hyehyun stared at me nervously.

“All that aside, look at this.” In the end, nobody stopped him so I had to slip out of Seogeung’s grasp by myself. Seogeung glowered at me for brushing him away. He muttered curses at me under his breath. If nobody was watching, he would have surely hit me.

I ignored him and returned to the stylist’s room. Then, I pushed the ornament on the wall. In front of everyone’s eyes, the bed flipped around like what I saw before. The witnesses stood in shock. “…Ah!”

That very moment, everyone probably imagined the same thing I did earlier. The picture we drew was… Goyeon’s stylist, lying on her pillow, unable to let out even a scream as she plummeted to the floor.

I didn’t know how deep the pit below the bed was, but I couldn’t imagine that this device was installed to save lives. This mansion had malicious intentions toward its guests.

“She was hanging from the ceiling like she committed suicide.” The only definitive inference we could make was the final stop of this passageway. This led to the ceiling above Goyeon’s body.

I stared at the space below the bed and said, “It seems like someone got rid of her using this trap.”

“I-it wasn’t me!” Raehee was the one who yelled first.

Not only was she the first one to find that the stylist was missing, but she also frequented the stylist’s room. She saw with her two eyes how people were suspected so far. She knew who would be questioned first.

“I knew nothing about that trap!” Raehee clutched her head with her hands as her entire body shook. She stuttered, “Wh-when I opened the door, she was already gone.”

However, the people who had already started to doubt her couldn’t take their eyes off her. Seogeung glared at Raehee and bellowed, “Aren’t you feigning ignorance after you pushed the button?”

“No way!” Raehee yelled back. She looked like she was about to cry at any moment.