Chapter 2: Waiting Room (2)

[2. Please take care not to damage or lose the hotel-issued mobile phone provided to guests. Anyone not carrying one will be considered an illegal intruder and removed by Security.]

Even though someone else had opened the door, what mattered was the exact wording of the rule.

“Ugh... Uwaaaaagh!”

The shaggy-haired man was still considered to have entered a room he had already entered once.

The moment he was thrown inside, he began screaming.

As though trying to dispose of the foreign object that had rolled into the room, dozens of hands shot up from the floor, seized the shaggy-haired man by the limbs, and twisted and folded them in every direction.

Broken bones tore through muscle and flesh, jutting grotesquely outward, while blood splattered across the room as though someone had sprayed the walls and floor with red paint.

His scream did not last long.

What followed was little more than the sound of air bubbling through blood.

“...Krrgh, khk... hkk.”

Inside the room stood a figure dressed in a maid uniform and wearing an old white rabbit mask, dingy and faded to an ashen gray with age.

It began tearing off the shaggy-haired man’s grotesquely twisted limbs one by one, almost as though sorting them for recycling.

There was no better way to describe it.

Skin and flesh ripped apart with absurd ease, as though they were worth less than sheets of paper.

CLICK-

Han-su, who had hurried back after hearing the scream, closed the door in Su-myeon’s place while Su-myeon stood frozen by what he had just seen.

Only then did Su-myeon realize he had been holding his breath.

He slowly released the air trapped in his chest.

A coin rolled out through the gap beneath the door, crossed the carpet, struck Su-myeon’s shoe with a soft tap, and came to a stop.

The scene had been witnessed by Su-myeon, Han-su, and....

“Wow.... This is way too realistic for a dream.”

The villain of this damned game.

“The rules are stricter than I expected.”

Ki San-hyeok.

Only the three of them had witnessed what happened directly.

The others, who had already begun moving away, merely stood frozen in shock at the sudden scream.

‘This bastard....’

Only after catching his breath did Su-myeon turn to glare at San-hyeok.

Tattoos covered him from the backs of his hands all the way up his neck and cheeks, and his hair had been bleached pale.

San-hyeok, who looked exactly like the sort of person anyone would instinctively avoid on the street, stuck out his pierced tongue and grinned at Su-myeon.

“.......”

Su-myeon clenched his teeth and did not bother responding.

If the shaggy-haired man had died because of his own carelessness, that would have been one thing.

But this was unmistakably murder.

“What exactly happened?”

At Han-su’s question, San-hyeok merely grinned wide enough to bare his teeth.

San-hyeok was a villain who committed all manner of deranged acts inside this hotel and somehow survived until nearly the very end.

A third-generation chaebol who had committed every imaginable kind of illegal and corrupt act, he was a character whose personality had been rotten from the very beginning.

‘...And I’m already getting tangled up with this guy.’

In the original game, he did not reveal his true nature until they had climbed several more floors.

So why was he already acting like this?

Had Su-myeon’s attempt to save the shaggy-haired man somehow been the wrong choice?

Maybe characters who were originally destined to die simply could not be saved.

San-hyeok watched Su-myeon brood for a moment, then shrugged with a strange expression and pointed toward the closed door.

“I don’t know either. I’m telling you, that guy who was so obsessed with his wallet just went inside on his own.”

Right?

After delivering such a shameless lie, San-hyeok flashed Su-myeon another revolting smile.

Su-myeon, who had been lost in thought, frowned slightly and answered.

“What are you talking about? You opened the door and shoved him inside.”

Why are you lying when I saw the whole thing?

He had gone out of his way to step forward in front of everyone twice just to save that man.

Twice!

And now this bastard had made all of that effort completely meaningless.

“What exactly happened?”

“I heard a scream....”

“Uh, where did that man from earlier go? Don’t tell me he actually went inside?”

The people who had crowded back into the narrow corridor began murmuring among themselves again.

Fortunately—or perhaps unfortunately—the echoes seemed to have swallowed most of Su-myeon’s words.

Only Han-su and San-hyeok, who were standing nearby, appeared to have heard him clearly.

San-hyeok swept his gaze over the panicking crowd before turning back to Su-myeon with the same crooked smile, his voice low and gloomy.

“You. Can you take responsibility for what you just said?”

Su-myeon was about to confront him, but then he suddenly noticed something.

A tiny droplet of blood had splashed onto his glasses.

Frowning, Su-myeon took them off, wiped the lens clean, and replied.

“The person who does something is the one responsible for it. The people listening can decide for themselves what they believe.”

Since the bastard younger than him had started speaking informally first, Su-myeon saw no reason to remain polite.

He made his position clear.

Please take care of the rest properly, Mr. Protagonist.

“...For now, let’s discuss this later.”

After hearing Su-myeon out, Han-su thought for a moment before responding, then turned back toward the room where the shaggy-haired man had disappeared.

He quietly pressed an ear against the door.

Apparently hearing nothing, he shook his head.

A man had gone inside and failed to come back out.

As things stood, there was no way anyone could simply ignore the unease hanging over them.

They needed to confirm what had happened.

“It said not to reenter a room after leaving it... so someone going inside for the first time should be fine.”

When Su-myeon quietly pointed that out, Han-su stared at him for a moment before carefully opening the door.

The room beyond was perfectly clean, as though nothing had happened.

The yellow wallpaper and old carpet covering the room were no different from those in the hallway.

“.......”

The vivid feast of red blood was still burned into Su-myeon’s vision.

He stepped back with a sigh.

Meanwhile, the others, unable to suppress their curiosity, crowded forward and squeezed into the narrow corridor to peer inside.

The square room was identical in every respect to the room where Su-myeon had first awakened.

There was only one difference.

A red piece of cloth folded into the shape of a rabbit sat in the very center of the room.

After glancing around, Han-su suddenly beckoned toward Su-myeon, who was standing well away from the doorway.

“Could you hold the door for a moment?”

...Why me, of all people?

He wanted to complain, but Su-myeon decided to simply do as Mr. Protagonist asked.

While Su-myeon held the door open, Han-su entered the room and returned carrying the red rabbit.

It was a piece of cloth neatly folded into the shape of a rabbit and soaked in red liquid.

It looked similar to the decorative towels hotel housekeepers sometimes folded for guests.

After hesitating for a moment, Han-su unfolded it.

A T-shirt appeared, partially torn and riddled with holes.

The shirt was completely saturated with a vivid red, slightly viscous liquid.

Su-myeon had no desire whatsoever to confirm exactly what it was.

“It appears to be the same clothing the man from earlier was wearing.”

At Han-su’s words, everyone recoiled in horror and stepped back.

The cloth gave off such a strong metallic stench that everyone nearby could smell it, and both of Han-su’s hands were drenched red from holding it.

Su-myeon lightly tapped Han-su on the shoulder with one finger.

“How about tying that to the doorknob for now, as a marker...?”

Han-su nodded at the suggestion and wrapped the T-shirt around the doorknob of the room before tying it securely.

Even from that simple motion, blood streamed from the twisted fabric.

The thick stench spread through the corridor, leaving no need to ask whether the liquid really was blood.

Unease and fear spread through the group, though not yet enough to send anyone into outright panic.

“For now, let’s move.”

The one fortunate thing was that none of the others had actually witnessed how the shaggy-haired man had died.

As far as they knew, someone had gone back into a room, disappeared, and left behind nothing but a blood-soaked T-shirt.

Perhaps the entire situation was simply too unreal to process.

Whatever the reason, the group managed to maintain a surprising degree of composure.

Now truly reduced to fifteen people, they walked for several minutes.

Gradually, the scenery around them began to change.

“Does this structure even make sense...?”

Everyone silently agreed with the muttered remark.

The corridor they had expected to lead somewhere eventually opened into a wide space.

There was no clear boundary where the hallway ended.

It had simply widened, while the same wallpaper and carpet continued uninterrupted.

Columns stood here and there in seemingly random positions.

There were even oddly placed partition walls and solitary fixed doors standing upright in the middle of nowhere.

“...I can only see the same wall beyond the hole.”

The shortest woman in the group said this while peering through a hole in the middle of a sagging wall.

Han-su immediately pulled the office-dressed woman away from it.

Because Han-su had closed the door on Su-myeon’s behalf earlier, only Han-su and San-hyeok had witnessed the creature directly.

That monster capable of tearing a human being apart as effortlessly as paper.

“It would be better not to look inside anything carelessly. It may be dangerous, so please don’t get too close.”

“Ah... yes.”

At Han-su’s firm warning, the woman answered meekly and stepped away from the wall.

The memory kept resurfacing in Su-myeon’s mind, and for no particular reason, he removed his glasses again and scrubbed the lenses hard.

He had watched almost every decent horror movie he could find.

There was hardly one of those infamous so-called “things you should never search for” that he had not looked up at least once.

He had privately thought himself fairly resistant to gore.

But had he ever smelled it?

No.

Had he even imagined the smell?

The hot metallic odor of blood mixed with the stench released when the body of someone who had been alive only moments ago was violently torn apart.

The wet sound of living flesh ripping into strips.

The sharp cracks of bones snapping one after another....

‘I feel like I’m going to throw up....’

Suppressing his nausea, Su-myeon shifted his attention to his phone.

He did not know whether everyone else had noticed, but another rule had appeared on the screen.

Ordinarily, safety rules were presented all at once from the beginning.

This game, however, worked a little differently.

As though deliberately emphasizing each one, the rules tended to appear one at a time depending on the situation and timing.

‘As long as we don’t break them, we can survive.’

The phone was the only thing they had been given in this bizarre place.

That alone made it important.

Su-myeon opened the app drawer on the phone with the heart-shaped mark on its back.

Inside this damned game, the apps served as useful tools for progression.

[Safety Rules] [Inventory] [Camera] [Messages] [Secret Shop]

‘What... is this...?’

Among them, one unfamiliar app immediately caught Su-myeon’s eye.

He tapped it.

The Secret Shop, represented by a golden-yellow bell-shaped icon, opened under the name <Beautiful Belle’s Secret Shop>.

Su-myeon had never seen anything like it in the game.

[Buy items with Rose Coins!]

When the guide message appeared on the opening screen, Su-myeon remembered the coin that had rolled against his shoe earlier and that he had picked up.

Something had suddenly rolled toward him, so he had pocketed it almost reflexively, but....

The silver coin was roughly the size of a 500-won coin and had roses embossed on both sides.

“.......”

After hesitating for a moment, Su-myeon raised the coin and pressed it against the screen.

Using the Inventory was simple.

If he placed an item that could be stored against the screen, it would slip inside.

Taking something back out was just as easy.

Sure enough, the coin sank effortlessly into the display.

[Rose Coins: 1]

The coin, now properly stored in the Inventory, appeared as usable currency in the shop.

But Su-myeon remained bewildered.

‘I found and followed every Easter egg in the game. There’s no way there should be a function I don’t know about.’

Even the secrets that required more physical skill than he could manage himself, he had watched through online walkthrough videos.

Su-myeon simply could not accept that there was an entire function he had never seen before.

As if deliberately flaunting its existence, the app displayed another guide window.

[Preparing stock....]

[Would you like to enable stock-arrival notifications?]

Had there been some recent update...?

Or was this a feature from some fan game he had never played?

As a self-proclaimed horror game enthusiast, Su-myeon felt his pride take a tiny hit.

Still, there was nothing else he could inspect for now.

With a quiet sigh, he enabled notifications and slipped the phone back into his sweatpants.

“...I am Kang Han-su.”

Right on cue, the protagonist approached and suddenly extended a hand toward Su-myeon.

A handshake with the protagonist he had controlled hundreds of times.

It felt strange.

Su-myeon unnecessarily wiped the sweat from his palm against his pants before accepting the offered hand.

“Ah, yes. I heard earlier. I’m Han Su-myeon.”

“Yes, Mr. Su-myeon. ......I believe what you said.”

Did he really need to come over and tell me that personally...?

The thought crossed Su-myeon’s mind automatically, but he gave an awkward nod.

For now, he was simply grateful that Han-su believed him rather than San-hyeok.

“Oh! Jackpot! There are stairs here!”

At that moment, San-hyeok’s voice rang out from up ahead.

He had wandered off on his own and had been rummaging around at the very front of the group.

Su-myeon quietly swallowed.

If everything up to this point had only been the tutorial, then the real game would begin on the next floor.