Chapter 138: Revisit (2)

[20. If you encounter a lost guest in front of a suite, clearly inform them that you are not a member of the staff.]

When Su-myeon encountered the black mass, he had intended to follow the rule.

After all, that was how you survived here.

But.

"Friend...... I've been waiting...."

The problem was that they had met this mass before.

It already knew they weren't employees, so why was it talking to them again?

The black mass filled nearly the entire corridor, making it impossible to simply squeeze past.

As though Su-myeon wasn't even there, it spoke to Han-su.

"Tea party...... are you going there... right away......? Alice is... waiting......."

"We have somewhere to go first."

When Su-myeon answered, only then did the mass's... head, if that was what it could be called.

The organ attached near the top tilted toward Su-myeon.

Su-myeon hesitated beneath the mass's sightless gaze, looking as though touching it would leave thick black liquid smeared across his hand.

A pitch-black abyss was staring into him.

During that strange silence, Han-su stepped in.

"We have somewhere we need to go."

At Han-su's words, the shadow reacted differently.

Its entire body heaved as though considering something, then pressed itself tightly against the wall to clear a path.

If they were heading in different directions, that did seem like the best solution....

"......."

For some reason, though, it looked as though it might suddenly spill outward and engulf them.

Still, with no other option, Su-myeon carefully headed past it, making sure not to step on its body.

The three of them, including Mu-yeon, pressed themselves close to the opposite wall and cautiously passed through the corridor.

Then, avoiding the black mass, they immediately headed toward the stairs going down.

But.

Squelch― Squelch―

Wet, sticky footsteps followed behind them.

When they walked, it walked. When they stopped, the sticky sound stopped as well.

The noise followed them all the way to the stairs, until Su-myeon finally couldn't stand it anymore and glanced at Han-su.

Han-su wore a slightly troubled expression before turning around.

Sure enough, the black mass was following them from about a meter behind.

"......I think it would be better if you went ahead to the tea party. We'll be there soon as well."

Han-su made the suggestion as politely as possible.

But the black mass was remarkably stubborn.

"Friend... I want to go together......."

Ultimately, now that they knew this mass had once been a survivor—or rather....

Was, in some sense, still a survivor—it felt deeply uncomfortable to reject it outright.

And if they upset it more than necessary, there was also a very real possibility that it might become aggressive instead.

"Walking around... the hotel together is more fun...... isn't it?"

The mass slowly muttered as though trying to persuade them.

Even Mu-yeon glanced nervously at them, enough white showing around his large puppy-like eyes to make his unease obvious.

Should they just lose it somewhere?

The thought did occur to Su-myeon, since the thing was slow, but considering that they would have to come back upstairs eventually, that didn't seem like a particularly good idea.

While thinking that far, Su-myeon suddenly came up with another idea.

"Maybe bringing it with us could actually be useful."

Han-su looked at him.

He clearly couldn't understand in what possible way that would be useful.

"Either way, it's showing us goodwill. Maybe we can take advantage of that."

Wasn't it an enormous mass perfectly suited to serve as a shield in an emergency?

If they decided to go even farther down past the spa, it might make an even better shield.

Of course, as Su-myeon had experienced many times already, no matter how friendly an entity inside a ghost story seemed, you could never trust it completely.

'Use everything you can.'

That was one of Su-myeon's most fundamental principles when dealing with ghost stories.

Han-su looked as though he had plenty he wanted to object to, but he didn't deny what Su-myeon had said.

After all, their plan was to do everything they could while they were here.

"......Fine. Let's go."

With both Su-myeon and the mass staring at him from either side, Han-su eventually had no choice but to nod.

The mass raised two organs that resembled arms high into the air as though cheering, and Su-myeon gave an awkward smile at the sight.

Their group, now four including Mu-yeon, carefully descended the stairs.

Su-myeon found himself feeling strangely conflicted as he watched Han-su's reaction.

Because if their situations had been reversed, Su-myeon knew he never would have allowed something like this.

Su-myeon already understood the situation himself.

Rationally speaking, Alice Hotel was a place where finding an intact survivor was extremely unlikely.

The people they had encountered on the lowest underground floor had been the first and last.

After that, nearly everything they found had been mannequins or mutated monsters whose original forms were already difficult to identify.

Even the excessively strict survival rules made it obvious that Alice didn't particularly care for keeping humans in their original forms.

Which meant that, realistically, finding Su-myeon's parents here in one piece might already be impossible.

"......."

Su-myeon tried not to think hopeless thoughts, but if he was being precise, this was closer to a factual assessment than pessimism.

Looking at the black mass following behind them, it was difficult to erase the possibility that his parents might have ended up like that too.

Even so, Su-myeon wanted to search the hotel somehow and find at least some trace of them.

How many people could remain entirely rational and cold when it came to their own family?

Su-myeon was only an ordinary person too.

'Would I even recognize them?'

If one of those monsters turned out to be his parents.

He wondered whether he would even be able to recognize them, but Su-myeon could no longer stop.

Now that he had already come this far, he had to search enough that he wouldn't be left with regrets.

"......."

In the meantime, they reached the spa, which had been restored so completely that it looked as though the desperate battle from their previous visit had never happened.

Neither San-hyeok's nor Min-su's body remained.

"Would you like to receive a spa treatment?"

At the sudden voice of a spade-suited playing-card employee, Mu-yeon startled violently and jumped.

Fortunately, perhaps because they had come down from above, there was no danger of becoming trapped inside the maze-like space.

Su-myeon had a question prepared that he had wanted to ask once they reached the spa.

"Is it possible to restore someone here to their original form?"

This was a spa capable of altering bodies.

Su-myeon had wondered whether there might be some way to turn Mu-yeon's body human again.

"What was the original form...?"

"I'd like to change Mr. Lee Mu-yeon's body back into a human one."

At Su-myeon's words, Mu-yeon stepped forward proudly.

The spade looked down beneath the desk and tilted its head.

"Of course, that's possible. However, to reconstruct the entire body using the parts currently available.... It would require major severing and reattachment of the limbs and body."

...It would require what?

Su-myeon frowned at the way the spade spoke about removing and reattaching parts of a living creature as casually as applying stickers.

"A total of eighty-seven procedures would be required, and each procedure costs ten million won."

What kind of insane bullshit was that?

Rather than earning enough vouchers for that, it seemed faster to just smash this entire place apart, earn Rose Coins, and make another Golden Rose bloom.

"Either way, one treatment is still free, right? Is it possible to change someone's vocal cords?"

"Yes! Of course. We can replace them with those of a dog, cat, pig, horse, or human."

Su-myeon's eyes moved toward Mu-yeon.

He wondered whether things might at least become more convenient if Mu-yeon could speak.

Mu-yeon seemed to consider it seriously for a moment, then firmly shook his head.

It would have been one thing if they could restore his own vocal cords.

But even for him, having his current ones removed and replaced with those of some other living creature was a different matter altogether.

Geon-su's case had been different because that had simply involved an item.

"......All right. If you don't want it, there's nothing we can do."

Su-myeon respected Mu-yeon's decision that he would rather keep barking than have vocal cords of unknown origin implanted in him.

Then he moved on to their next objective.

"How do you handle corpses generated inside the hotel?"

At Su-myeon's question, the spade answered in a clear, cheerful voice.

"I don't understand what you mean."

There was no way it truly couldn't understand that.

After thinking for a moment, Su-myeon translated the question into the hotel's terminology and asked again.

"......Are all discarded parts generated here kept as spares?"

"Yes, that's correct. In the case of discarded parts generated within the hotel, we collect only those we can select and reuse. Would you like to inspect their quality?"

A friendly voice offering something Su-myeon would rather refuse.

But there was a reason he couldn't.

He had to check.

"......Yes. All right. Could you show me?"

***

As Su-myeon followed the spade employee leading the way, a thought occurred to him.

What kind of person had this employee been while alive?

Were things like its sex and voice still the same?

Or had this being, too, been dismantled and reconstructed from various pieces?

The supply storage room behind the spa, which Su-myeon was entering for the first time, smelled disgusting.

"Ugh...."

The sharp smell of formalin stabbed at his nose.

It smelled as though everything had been soaked in harsh chemicals.

And as if this were the prop warehouse for some horror movie, pieces of every imaginable kind of creature were displayed everywhere.

The room was packed with large display cabinets.

Among the body parts sorted by type, Su-myeon suppressed his nausea and managed to make his way toward the section containing heads.

Even if they belonged to his parents, Su-myeon wasn't confident he could recognize them from nothing but a hand or the sole of a foot.

"......."

The severed heads arranged on plates inevitably reminded him of the Red Queen, but the face he found there was unexpected.

The very first one he saw belonged to someone he had failed to save.

Recognizing the first victim he had witnessed inside Alice Hotel, Su-myeon swallowed dryly and fought down the urge to vomit.

The same shaggy hair.

The same expression of horror.

It had been placed there like a preserved specimen.

"......Haa."

Han-su seemed to have seen the same thing, because Su-myeon heard him exhale beside him.

Su-myeon barely managed to suppress his emotions and continued examining the other heads.

Then he stopped again.

"......Gi San-hyeok?"

He hadn't expected this bastard to be stored here too.

Perhaps it heard the puzzled question, because Gi San-hyeok's severed head suddenly snapped its eyes open.

"You'rebackyoucamebackyoucameback."

Han-su caught Su-myeon as he jerked backward in shock.

"You killed me! You did! You!"

Strictly speaking, San-hyeok's fate seemed more like the result of his own actions.

Apparently, even reduced to this state, he wasn't actually dead, because he kept screaming at them.

It was very much like a ghost story to preserve as much causality as possible by keeping someone alive even in a state like this.

Either way, he had nothing left but his head and couldn't move, so while disgusting, he wasn't much of a threat.

The problem was that San-hyeok's head kept screaming so loudly that the other body parts, which had apparently been dormant, began twitching awake as well.

"......We should get out of here."

The only silver lining in this nightmare was perhaps that among the ones Su-myeon could recognize, his parents weren't there.

The various heads began muttering to themselves while arms and legs waved and flailed.

Leaving behind eyes darting wildly in every direction and organs beginning to pulse, they hurried back toward the entrance.

"Ugh...!"

Han-su took a large step backward to avoid a hand that suddenly shot toward them.

In doing so, he collided with the black mass that had been following him so faithfully and that they had almost forgotten about.

It felt horribly like sinking into soft slime.

Startled, Han-su hurried to straighten himself.

"......."

Han-su froze.

He had braced himself by placing a hand against the mass's body, and there, between the black folds, was something like a thick cord....

"......?"

On impulse, he grabbed the strangely familiar cord and pulled.

An access pass hanging from the end emerged.

Like most access passes, it had a simple enough design that the photograph and printed information could be recognized immediately.

[Seoul Southern Police Station, Violent Crimes Team 1, Team Leader Yoon Chang-sik]

The instant Han-su read it, he looked back at the mass in disbelief.

"......Captain...?"