Chapter 10: Shopping Mall (5)

[10. All transactions occurring within the Hotel are guaranteed by Ellis Hotel. Before breaking any transaction or agreement, please prepare sufficient compensation.]

Su-myeon flinched hard despite himself and quickly pulled his hand away from the screen.

‘I-I almost pressed the wrong one.’

When he lowered his gaze to the floor, he saw a pair of feet right behind him, so close they nearly touched his heels.

The shoes were old sneakers, exactly like the pair he had left on the lower floor.

“.......”

The sight of those familiar shoes pressed so close behind him made Su-myeon’s hands tremble.

Clenching one hand tightly, he carefully pressed the Lost Item Report button.

Ding-dong-

With a cheerful chime, a numbered ticket was printed.

Fortunately, it was number 1. Sometimes, if you were unlucky, you could get a number like 666, but....

He decided not to think about that right now.

“Excuse me, did you bring a lost item...?”

Su-myeon felt as though he might faint at the voice that kept speaking to him.

He knew exactly what was standing right behind him.

The thing the safety rules had warned them about.

“That.... I think that’s mine....”

Something claiming that the lost item belonged to it.

It was a mannequin dressed exactly like him.

By what standard, he had no idea, but it was wearing the outfit he had been dressed in when he first arrived here, not what he was wearing now.

“Excusemeexcusemeexcusemeexcusemeexcuseme.”

As the mannequin called out to him like a broken recording, Su-myeon somehow managed to keep his mouth shut.

Even more horrifyingly, its voice sounded almost exactly like his own.

But as long as he did not answer it or meet its eyes, it could not harm him.

Ding-dong-

With another cheerful chime, the number 1 appeared on the monitor in front of the information desk.

“Customer number 1~”

The attendant’s bright voice only deepened the sense of dissonance.

Su-myeon edged sideways, barely managing to slip past the mannequin without touching it.

“You’re listening. You can hear me. You can hear me. Whyareyouignoringmewhyareyouignoringmewhyareyouignoringme.”

The mannequin’s voice continued behind him, but Su-myeon forced himself to ignore it and headed for the information desk.

There, a faceless attendant sat in a neat uniform.

Instead of eyes, a nose, or a mouth, a red diamond was drawn across their face.

“How may I help you?”

At that moment, the center of the diamond split open lengthwise like a mouth, and the attendant spoke.

Su-myeon hurriedly handed over the lost item.

“I picked up a lost item on the floor. I’d like you to find its owner.”

At Su-myeon’s words, the attendant accepted the blood-soaked sausage.

Watching the crimson blood stain the snow-white glove, Su-myeon closed his eyes for a long moment before opening them again.

“Oh my! This is an item stolen from our store. Goodness. To think such a conscientious customer would pick it up and return it to us.”

The attendant spoke in a bright, cheerful voice, sounding genuinely delighted.

Their voice and manner of speaking were so cheerful that they felt unnatural.

“At our Hotel, we offer a special reward to virtuous customers. Could you please place your Heartphone here for a moment?”

Su-myeon hurriedly held out his phone as instructed.

With a bright jingling sound effect, the voucher balance on Su-myeon’s phone, which had only 100 won remaining, skyrocketed.

[100,000,100 won]

One hundred million for a single sausage.

For that much money, there was no reason he couldn’t put up with a little blood.

“The special voucher expires 4,444 hours after issuance. Happy shopping!”

At the attendant’s cheerful words, Su-myeon pulled his Heartphone away from the machine.

But when he looked down, there was a Rose Coin in his hand that had not been there a moment ago.

“Uh, does this have a time limit too?”

At Su-myeon’s question, the attendant tilted their head almost ninety degrees as he held up the Rose Coin.

“That is not something I gave you, though?”

Their reaction suggested they knew absolutely nothing about the Rose Coin.

Su-myeon swallowed dryly before speaking again.

“Ah, I must have been mistaken. I’m sorry. But... earlier, there was a mannequin claiming ownership of the lost item, and it interfered with my shopping.”

“Oh dear. We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience. We will promptly dispose of the defective mannequin!”

As the diamond-faced attendant straightened their head again, the corners of their mouth stretched upward to a grotesque degree.

And in stark contrast to that unsettling sight, the strange pressure Su-myeon had felt behind him vanished.

“......Thank you.”

“Yes! Then—”

Before the attendant could say anything more, Su-myeon quickly bowed and hurried out of the Customer Service Center.

He showed the Heartphone screen to the group waiting outside with tense expressions.

One hundred million.

A full one hundred million won.

The tension drained from everyone’s faces the moment they confirmed the number on the screen.

“Let’s go. Shopping.”

“W-wait. Can you really use that? Hold on. Is that actually one hundred million? Ones, tens, hundreds, thousands....”

When Su-myeon immediately started walking, Ju-hee hurried after him in surprise and checked the Heartphone screen again.

Su-myeon answered without hesitation.

“This has an expiration period too. We should hurry and spend it.”

4,444 hours.

It was enough time to last more than half a year, but Su-myeon deliberately neglected to mention exactly how long the period was.

Instead, now that he was suddenly rich, Su-myeon decided to make a very generous offer.

“Is there anything you want to buy?”

Then again, even if they bought luxury goods or expensive clothes here, would there really be any point...?

As expected, everyone reacted vaguely, unable to come up with an answer.

So Su-myeon told them to follow him and took the lead.

Having already chosen his destination, Su-myeon stopped in front of one particular store.

“This is....”

Han-su stopped short as he looked over the shop.

It was the grotesque store filled with hair and eyeballs that Ju-hee had been looking at earlier.

Inside the shop, which subtly squirmed and shifted as though it were alive, stood a display case Ju-hee had failed to notice.

It was covered in hair, making it difficult to see at first glance, but through the gaps between the writhing strands, they could just barely glimpse what lay inside.

Su-myeon pointed toward it.

“For now, I’m buying that.”

No one seemed eager to take a closer look at what exactly was inside.

Even if they tried, the entire shop was littered with rolling eyeballs concealed between strands of hair.

But at Su-myeon’s words, Ju-hee eventually lost the battle against her curiosity and stepped closer.

“......A gun...?”

Why were they selling guns in a place like this?

At Ju-hee’s murmur, Han-su, who had deliberately been looking elsewhere, turned his gaze toward the display as well.

Peering carefully through a gap in the hair covering the case, he saw a gun that was impossible not to recognize.

In this garbage dump of a place, Su-myeon had found something genuinely useful for the group.

“K2?”

At Han-su’s words, Park Du-pal, one of the older members of the group, immediately showed interest and approached the display window.

It was a rifle almost any man who had completed his military service would recognize.

The absurd part was simply why the hell it was here.

“Oh, it’s 9,999,900 won. That’s not even that expensive, is it?”

Du-pal had already spotted the price tag attached to the display case.

For someone with one hundred million won, it was an exceedingly reasonable price.

The problem was that the display case stood right in the middle of the store.

“You’re... saying you’re actually going to buy that, right...?”

And if you wanted to buy it, you had to go in there... right...?

At Ha-min’s hesitant question, Su-myeon briefly closed his eyes and drew a deep breath.

Getting a gun in a place this dangerous VS stepping on something disgusting for a few moments.

Between the two, of course the former mattered more.

“I’ll go in and come back.”

If I faint in there, please drag me out.

Please.

He wanted desperately to leave those words behind as well, but the timid Su-myeon gritted his teeth.

Now that the hundred million had been credited to his voucher, if he wanted to spend any of it, he had no choice but to enter the store, make the payment himself, and come back out.

According to the rules, the Heartphone absolutely had to remain with its owner.

“Ugh....”

Su-myeon let out a groan of disgust before he had even entered, braced himself, and slowly stepped into the store.

He wanted nothing more than to dash inside, pay, and rush straight back out, but instead he moved carefully.

Back when he had entered this shop in the game simply by moving his fingers, it had not seemed nearly this difficult.

Now, however, things were very different.

If at all possible, he did not want to step on any of the eyeballs hidden among the strands of hair....

“...!”

He stepped on one.

He stepped on it.

He was pretty sure he had just stepped on one?!

The instant something soft and squishy compressed beneath his foot, Su-myeon jerked it away and planted it somewhere else.

Pop.

Something beneath that foot burst instead.

Goosebumps erupted all over his body.

He thought he was going to vomit.

But after finally reaching the display case, Su-myeon opened the glass cover and picked up the familiar rifle.

“.......”

While unleashing an endless stream of curses inside his head, Su-myeon somehow managed to complete the payment.

Carefully?

He wasn’t even thinking about that anymore.

Whether he stepped on something or not, before he could even register what was beneath his feet, Su-myeon bolted out of the store.

“Y-you did well....”

Ju-hee awkwardly patted Su-myeon on the back.

Receiving one hundred million won was certainly enviable.

But if this was what spending it looked like, it suddenly seemed a little less enviable.

After Su-myeon, white as a sheet, had calmed himself somewhat by vigorously rubbing the soles of his shoes against the floor, Han-su asked,

“Are there bullets in it?”

Su-myeon already knew the answer, but for the sake of the others, he removed the magazine and showed them.

Fortunately, it was loaded with all thirty rounds.

After checking it, Han-su nodded.

“From now on, Mr. Su-myeon, please stay at the rear of the group.”

At Han-su’s words, Park Du-pal, who had been watching from behind, abruptly spoke up.

“You said your name was Mr. Su-myeon, right? Have you done much shooting?”

“I did just enough not to stand out.”

Su-myeon answered sheepishly.

In the military, even coming in last was enough to make you stand out, so Su-myeon had always aimed for somewhere around average.

At the very least, thanks to serving in a unit that could reasonably be called part of the “modern military,” the thoroughly average Su-myeon had managed to get through his service without attracting much attention.

Of course, that was only relatively speaking.

Even for Su-myeon, the military had still been the absolute worst.

“What unit were you in? That detective over there was active duty too, right?”

In my day, we didn’t use K2s. We had M16s, you know~

And just like that, Park Du-pal’s army stories began.

That old man, seriously.

He really had no sense of timing.

Park Du-pal, whose hair was beginning to thin, looked to be in his fifties, but unfortunately, age had not made him particularly perceptive.

If anything, he seemed like the very embodiment of the ordinary middle-aged man you could find anywhere.

“But against... a monster like that. Would bullets even work?”

Ju-hee, who had seen the Mad Hatter with her own eyes, cut through the idle chatter and asked.

By now, she seemed to have fully accepted that the enemies they would encounter in this place were not human.

“Wouldn’t they at least buy us enough time to escape?”

Of course, if Su-myeon aimed for the Mad Hatter’s vital points and shot properly, he could kill him too.

He had no idea whether that would count as a permanent death, but at the very least, he would not have to see the Mad Hatter again until he left this place.

Still, Su-myeon pretended to be uncertain and gave a suitably vague answer before bringing up the more important point.

“More importantly, it should at least work against Ki San-hyeok.”

“Ki San-hyeok?”

Ju-hee looked puzzled at Su-myeon’s words.

Ah, right.

That bastard.

They had never even exchanged names with him.

Just as Su-myeon thought, Oh no, Ju-hee seemed to work out from context who San-hyeok was.

“Ki San-hyeok, the grandson of Kihoe Group? The guy who was involved in that abuse-of-power controversy recently....”

Ju-hee frowned thoughtfully before speaking as though something had suddenly clicked.

“That’s right, it is him. I didn’t recognize him because he bleached his hair, but I think he’s the same Ki San-hyeok I saw in the photos.”

So that was why the bastard had been screaming earlier, asking if they knew who he was.

Ju-hee muttered in disgust.

Thanks to her recognizing him, the fact that Su-myeon should never have had a chance to learn his name passed without raising any suspicion.

“For now, I was thinking of using the voucher I received to buy each of you something useful. What do you think?”

“Preferably something that’ll help keep you safe.”

At Su-myeon’s addition, everyone nodded with remarkable obedience.