Chapter 142: Revisit (6)

[22. Tea time lasts for 10 minutes. Conversation alone is the sole proof that time is passing, so please enjoy a pleasant conversation with Alice.]

With a heavy, wet sound, the red dress crumpled onto the floor.

All that remained there was the dark crimson blood soaking into the ground.

Every obsession the Red Queen had possessed vanished beneath the name of happiness.

Every living being desires and yearns for something, making that the goal of its life.

But what if everything made you happy?

What if there was nothing left you wanted to achieve, and you found satisfaction in everything?

Wouldn’t you start wanting to meet your end in that state rather than return?

“......!”

Su-myeon stepped back just before the liquid that had once been the Red Queen spread far enough to touch the tips of his shoes.

Mu-yeon’s loud barking snapped his bewildered mind back into focus.

At some point, even the jazz music had stopped, leaving only Mu-yeon’s warning barks filling the wine bar.

“.......”

Swallowing dryly, Su-myeon put the pen in his hand into his inventory.

[The Red Queen’s Pen]

[A ballpoint pen capable of establishing rules within Alice Hotel. A premium item made by dissolving someone’s causality into ink.]

Su-myeon briefly clutched his head as he read the description displayed in his inventory.

Han-su, who had been looking toward the table where the Red Queen had stood, pointed beneath it.

“Item 17.”

At his words, Su-myeon turned his gaze and saw Item 17 written below, revised and rewritten again and again.

The Red Queen had probably used this pen to write it there and alter it however she pleased.

But she had handed that pen over to him, and then she had simply....

‘Happily vanished...?’

Had he used too much of the perfume?

He couldn’t tell, but it didn’t quite line up with what he had believed—that death inside a ghost story meant the disappearance of causality.

‘......No.’

Or maybe it actually did follow the same logic?

If causality and items were connected in some way, then it was entirely possible.

If she had consumed all the causality she possessed, dissolved it into an item, and disappeared....

“Then what was dissolved into the ink inside that....”

“......Might have been the Red Queen’s causality.”

With complicated feelings, Su-myeon swallowed dryly and backed away another few steps.

Suddenly unsettled, he took off his outer jacket, which might have gotten a little perfume on it when he sprayed it earlier, and shook it hard through the air.

“Anyway, I think we’ve learned pretty much everything we needed to know by now.”

Su-myeon looked at Chang-sik, who was still sprawled off to one side laughing stupidly, and the clown, who at some point had lain down beside him as well.

As for what they should do with those two....

“......Let’s think about it a little more.”

Su-myeon nodded at Han-su’s words.

The place made him uncomfortable, so Su-myeon took a few bottles of juice from the cabinet behind the bar and headed toward a more comfortable seat farther inside.

“Let’s rest for a bit, think things over, then head back up.”

Then Su-myeon rummaged through his inventory, took something out, and set it down beside one of the chairs.

***

Sa-rin came to the Governance after Ju-hee suddenly contacted her first thing in the morning and asked her to come.

She had actually planned on sleeping in that morning, so she was still somewhat groggy.

Barely suppressing a yawn, she felt uncomfortable under the serious looks Ju-hee and Du-pal were giving her.

And what they said next was even stranger.

“What are you talking about? You’re asking whether Chief Han is actually human....”

He’s your chief, isn’t he?

Hearing people who had known and observed him longer and more closely than she had say something like this left Sa-rin dumbfounded.

He could be impulsive at times, but he was an exceptionally kind and upright man.

He denied it himself, but he also had a remarkably self-sacrificing side.

If she had to judge his character, wouldn’t he actually qualify as a fairly admirable person by modern standards?

And honestly, while his features were a little intimidating, he was quite good-looking too.

Even the fact that he was working so hard to find his parents contributed to the favorable impression she had of him.

He clearly seemed like a decent man who had received an excellent upbringing.

And yet.

“Of course he is! If that man isn’t human, then everyone else in the world might as well be beasts!”

“Then what about Ryang?”

Sa-rin frowned at Ju-hee’s follow-up question.

“She’s completely different from that dokkaebi. Sure, that dokkaebi does have something like a physical body now, but....”

Sa-rin gestured above her head.

Ryang had a horn growing from her head.

Didn’t she look blatantly nonhuman to anyone who saw her?

As Sa-rin went from bewildered to outright offended, Du-pal gestured as though trying to calm her down.

“We’re just trying to be certain, miss shaman. Honestly, yeah. If we’re being really honest about it.”

Du-pal continued with an unusually solemn expression.

“Even if Han Su-myeon isn’t human, we’re still going to help him.”

“That’s why we want to know for sure. We have to understand what he is if we’re going to help him. We don’t want to make some stupid mistake and put him in a difficult situation.”

Ju-hee nodded seriously along with Du-pal.

Sa-rin was once again left speechless by their words.

They were being completely serious.

“Don’t shamans sometimes fail to distinguish between humans and ghosts?”

Ju-hee’s added question wounded Sa-rin’s pride for a moment, but she couldn’t deny it.

There really were extremely rare cases like that.

“So doesn’t that mean that even if he weren’t human, you couldn’t be one hundred percent certain?”

When Du-pal added that to Ju-hee’s question, Sa-rin shook her head again.

“If you take it that far, there’s no end to it. By that logic, you two couldn’t be sure you’re human either. But look at the way he behaves.”

There was one fundamental difference between Ryang and Su-myeon.

“If someone like him isn’t human, then what is?”

Su-myeon, whose way of thinking and every process by which he arrived at conclusions were more human than anyone else’s, and Ryang, who was fundamentally inhuman.

It was a difference everyone could feel from their ordinary behavior even without anyone needing to point it out.

“Chief Han is special, sure, but so am I.”

There were humans specialized in ghosts to the point that shamans existed.

So why couldn’t there be humans similarly specialized in ghost stories?

Perhaps they simply had yet to be properly defined.

Perhaps they simply had yet to be discovered.

Su-myeon might not even be the only one.

At Sa-rin’s words, Ju-hee and Du-pal seemed strangely relieved.

Her explanation sounded more plausible than their own theory.

***

“Haha, hahahaha.”

“Damn it. I’m starting to lose my mind too.”

“......Sorry.”

Somehow, Chang-sik had been heavily affected by the perfume and was still bursting into laughter.

In the end, Su-myeon and Han-su were unable to abandon either Chang-sik or the clown and headed toward the VIP lounge with both of them in tow.

The mannequins at the spa were still busy cleaning the floor, so there was no particular danger.

They were extremely professional service workers who prioritized business above all else.

“.......”

Though that only made them feel even more grotesque.

Su-myeon left something else he had taken from his inventory there as well, then headed toward the final floor.

Things would be easier if the perfume worked on Alice too, but.

“They probably wouldn’t have given us something like that at the spa if it did.”

Su-myeon felt as though all of this was part of Alice’s scheme.

The Red Queen had seemed dissatisfied from the beginning that she wasn’t the master of °• N ?? v ?? l i g h t •° the ghost story.

Still.

‘Was that pen ending up in my hands part of the plan too?’

That was something he couldn’t know.

Su-myeon rummaged through his inventory, which was gradually becoming packed with all sorts of junk, and pulled out two chocolate bars.

When had he put these in there? The Mountain of the Red Cloak?

A sealed chocolate bar wasn’t going to spoil in just a few months, so it seemed fine.

How had he accumulated so much stuff?

After going over the items and various consumables one more time, he offered one to Han-su.

“Want one?”

Han-su looked like he was about to decline, but then accepted one and put it in his mouth.

The VIP lounge was probably stocked with all kinds of food.

But this was the sort of place where something could look beautiful while being made from the worst possible ingredients, so caution was necessary.

‘Wow. He really put the whole thing in his mouth at once.’

Then, when Han-su even stuffed the wrapper into his own pocket afterward, Su-myeon let out a small laugh.

Did he have any intention of actually tasting it?

Still, getting something sweet into his system cleared his head a little.

Beep- Beep-

The clown following behind them suddenly gave a few quiet blows on its horn, then pointed at the plastic trash in Su-myeon’s hand.

“......You want this?”

This? Why?

When Su-myeon handed it over anyway, the clown abruptly split its head open in several directions.

Then swallowed the trash whole.

Afterward, it returned to the cute appearance it had been showing Su-myeon.

“............Thank you.”

Don’t think too deeply about it. It just disposed of some trash for him.

Repeating that to himself, Su-myeon climbed the stairs again.

This place wasn’t unfamiliar either. It was his second visit.

Beyond the stretch of black-and-white tiles arranged like a chessboard....

“Welcome!”

A bright, ringing voice.

Up to that point, nothing was different from before.

“I’m happy to see you again like this.”

But the smiling blonde girl....

She looked completely different from the monster he had seen before.

Unlike the overwhelming presence from last time, she now looked like a child it would probably be illegal to threaten carelessly.

“You made some friends at our hotel in the meantime? I’m delighted.”

With her innocent smile, she barely looked old enough to be in middle school.

Of course, she probably wasn’t a child on the inside.

But weren’t humans creatures who inevitably found themselves influenced by appearances?

If Alice had chosen that disguise to lower their guard, then she had chosen well.

“Come here. Hurry over and sit down.”

Alice beckoned toward the five figures still standing at the entrance.

Around her, there were exactly five chairs prepared, as though meant solely for them.

“You came at an awkward time, so why don’t we spend a while talking about something else until it’s time for the tea party?”

Su-myeon had a plan.

It was a plan that would only work if he got close first, so Han-su and Su-myeon exchanged looks before approaching Alice.

The one thing that remained the same as before was that several strands of her long blonde hair still extended up to the ceiling like puppet strings.

Maybe her true body was up there....

“Unfortunately, there’s nothing up there.”

Alice noticed where Su-myeon was looking and gave him a coy smile.

“Don’t people prefer Alice looking like this?”

I find it a little uncomfortable, though.

At Alice’s prim remark, Su-myeon still hadn’t properly answered her even once.

He couldn’t simply maintain his silence forever, either.

“......So you chose your appearance based on our preferences?”

Su-myeon decided to break the rule he had set for himself.

When he gave Alice a proper answer, her smile deepened considerably.

Finally.

The thought was written plainly across her expression, but Su-myeon didn’t care.

From this point onward, the conversation itself was essentially a trap Su-myeon was laying for Alice.

At most, what she could do to Su-myeon was bind him to this hotel forever. Something like that.

But the conclusion Su-myeon had reached was on an entirely different level.

‘If this works, I should at least be able to stop this hotel.’

And if he achieved the maximum possible effect, he might even be able to erase the hotel altogether.

“That’s right. What do you think? Do you like this one better than before?”

Alice offered them the food she had prepared again this time.

But Su-myeon absolutely did not want to put any of it in his mouth.

The clown happily ate from a platter piled high with arms that clearly belonged to who-knew-who, but Su-myeon kept trying his best not to pay attention to it as he spoke.

“It’s not bad, but honestly, isn’t this appearance a little too generic? I think the previous one had more genre-specific aesthetic appeal.”

For now, this was the bait Su-myeon was throwing out.