Chapter 20: Suite Room

[20. If you encounter a lost guest in front of the Suite Room, make it clear that you are not an employee.]

Unable to find any way to help Min-su, the group had no choice but to leave him behind and climb another floor.

What awaited them there was the floor containing the Suite Rooms.

Everyone was far too exhausted to keep exploring, so they sprawled out near the entrance and waited for midnight.

Their third midnight passed in silence and darkness.

After enduring that hour with their nerves stretched taut, the group prepared to move again.

"Is that man... dead?"

Only then did Ju-hee finally voice the question.

She did not say who she meant, but everyone understood.

"No one survives a hatchet to the back of the skull."

Han-su answered flatly.

And yet something continued to nag at them, making it difficult to simply move on.

"......Was he even still human by then?"

Ha-min raised a reasonable doubt, but Su-myeon answered without hesitation.

"Monsters that aren't human die from bullets and hatchets too."

Silence followed.

As though trying to lighten the atmosphere, Ju-hee forced some optimism into her voice.

"Anyway, we only have two more floors to go before we can get out. Right?"

"That's right. Exactly. We've already made it this far! Let's hold on just a little longer."

Ha-min chimed in, doing his best to bolster everyone's spirits.

As far as Su-myeon could tell, Han-su had never seemed shaken in the first place, but the others appeared to draw some comfort from reassuring one another.

"For now, everyone's exhausted. Let's make sure the area is safe, get some sleep, and move again afterward."

Sleep deprivation was the condition Su-myeon hated most.

Having said that, he once again took the lead in search of a safe place to rest.

'But why does he keep looking at me like that.......'

Young-cheol's expectant gaze made him slightly uncomfortable, but Su-myeon decided to be understanding.

The man had spent who knew how long trapped with a piece of garbage like Ki San-hyeok.

It was only natural that he would react this way.

Su-myeon trusted that those expectations would fade on their own once Young-cheol realized how ordinary he truly was.

The Suite Room floor—Basement Level 2—consisted of a long corridor covered entirely in red carpet.

The hallway had an antique elegance to it, while the doors and their nameplates were lavishly decorated in gold, almost to an excessive degree.

"This is a huge step up from the regular rooms."

Compared to the damp, faded yellow wallpaper and worn carpet of Basement Level 9, this place was extravagant almost to the point of absurdity.

"Anyway, this is our first time actually entering one of the rooms, so surely we can use one of these, right?"

Han-su said as he checked the nearest door.

[Room 666]

"Not exactly a room number I'm eager to walk into."

Du-pal muttered before moving a little farther down the hall and checking the next room.

[Room 666] [Room 666] [Room 666] [Room 666] [Room 666]

Every single room bore the same number.

And an especially unpleasant number at that.

The doors stretched endlessly down the corridor.

Very occasionally, however, a room with a harmless number would appear.

Something ordinary, like 201.

If they found one of those, they could sleep comfortably in a proper bed.

'No luck this time.'

After walking for quite some time and finding nothing but the same number over and over again, Su-myeon decided to give up early.

No one was seriously injured, starving, or dehydrated.

All things considered, everyone was in reasonably good condition.

It would have been nice if Young-cheol could sleep somewhere more comfortable, but aside from some bruising, he had no major injuries either.

Better to rest wherever they could than waste precious energy chasing something uncertain.

"...Let's just sleep in the hallway."

Of course, knowing it was the rational choice did not make it feel any less miserable.

Sleep was by far the strongest of Su-myeon's basic desires, and he was extremely particular about the quality of his bed.

With a sour expression, he sat down on the carpet.

At least the temperature was neither too hot nor too cold, which eased the discomfort somewhat.

Once Su-myeon settled in, the others found places nearby.

Sleeping in a hotel corridor with rooms lining both sides felt bizarre, but there was no other option.

A little sleep would make everything feel more manageable.

"We're almost there. Just a little farther up and we'll be outside."

Ha-min spoke quietly from among the resting group.

"Do you think we'll ever see each other again? After we get out?"

No one answered.

It was as though everyone had already fallen asleep.

Su-myeon heard the question too, but exhaustion surged over him like a tide, pulling him back and forth between wakefulness and sleep.

He could not answer immediately.

Just a moment.

He thought he was turning Ha-min's question over in his mind one last time when—

... ... .......

"...!"

Su-myeon jolted awake, startled by the realization that he had fallen asleep.

How long had he been out?

Alarmed, he checked the time.

It was already well past 8 AM.

He was surprised he had slept for so long, but considering the plush carpet and how utterly exhausted he had been, it was not all that strange.

"Haah...."

Even so, the sleep had done little to ease his fatigue.

Su-myeon removed his glasses and rubbed around his eyes.

The others did not look much better.

Ju-hee merely sat there blinking blankly, seemingly lost in thought, while Du-pal was still asleep.

Young-cheol looked as though his injuries were bothering him, so Su-myeon rummaged through his bag for painkillers.

"Here."

Unsure which kind would be appropriate, Su-myeon simply handed over every type of painkiller he had.

Young-cheol selected the ones he needed.

"Thank you."

"Yeah."

You should be thankful.

Su-myeon watched him swallow the pills, then looked around once more.

The corridor stretched endlessly in both directions.

Ha-min, whose energy never seemed to run out, was already on his feet surveying the surroundings.

"......What's wrong?"

Then Su-myeon noticed that all the color had drained from Ha-min's face.

His brow furrowed.

At the question, Ha-min looked around one more time.

"Hyung...."

Su-myeon followed Ha-min's gaze and scanned their surroundings again.

Nothing seemed out of place.

Han-su got to his feet after noticing Ha-min's strange expression.

Young-cheol, having swallowed his medicine, did the same.

And Ju-hee and Du-pal, still asleep......

"...!"

Su-myeon suddenly realized what was wrong and shot to his feet.

"Han-su is gone!"

***

Kang Han-su.

A proud police officer of the Republic of Korea.

A detective in the Violent Crimes Unit, no less.

He had always believed the only thing he truly feared was an unsolved case.

But now, confronted with the unknown—

something that made even the coldest unsolved case seem trivial—

he felt a crushing sense of helplessness.

"Excuse me....... Where is Room ■■■?"

A shapeless black mass had spoken those words.

When it woke Han-su from his sleep, he gave the most correct answer he could think of.

"I'm not an employee of this hotel, so I wouldn't know."

Han-su answered firmly, taking care not to violate the rules.

"Oh....... I'm sorry.........."

The entity's voice somehow sounded dejected as it appeared to shuffle backward.

Taking advantage of the opening, Han-su quickly reached toward Su-myeon beside him to wake him.

But instead of retreating as expected, the black mass suddenly stretched its neck unnaturally long and shoved a single eyeball right up against Han-su's face.

"Then...... are you a guest...?"

Its form was so indistinct that Han-su could not even tell where the voice was coming from, much less what organ it was using to speak.

Faced with a question from something that could only be described as a mass, Han-su desperately repeated the Safety Rules in his head.

"Yes. That's correct."

"Then...... are you going upstairs...?"

The follow-up caught Han-su off guard.

There had been nothing about this question in the rules.

Did that mean any answer would be safe?

He remained silent for a while, but the creature showed no sign of leaving without an answer.

After a long staring contest between Han-su's eyes and the creature's single eyeball, he finally replied.

".........Yes...."

Would it be better to wake the others?

Or would it be wiser to keep quiet and let the creature leave without disturbing them?

When there was nothing he could be certain of, what was the right decision if he wanted to protect the group?

"Then...... Do you want to go together...?"

"......."

Did that mean it knew the way upstairs?

Han-su glanced toward the exhausted faces of his companions.

They were all thoroughly sick of wandering through passages that led them in circles.

If he could scout the route ahead......

'It would help.'

And even if that was not the case, he could not allow this thing to linger near the others.

At the very least, leading it away from the group seemed like the right decision.

He suddenly remembered Su-myeon calmly conversing with the Red Queen without so much as flinching.

He could not keep forcing all the responsibility onto that man.

Even if all he could do was act as bait, he could at least draw the danger away from everyone else.

That much, he was capable of.

"Do you know the way up?"

At Han-su's question, a long protruding structure—presumably its head—swayed in what seemed to be a nod.

Han-su nodded in return, then picked up a bag of candy resting atop the group's luggage.

"......Yes. Lead the way. I'll follow."

***

"Why the hell does everyone keep disappearing one by one?!"

"This isn't the same as when Su-myeon disappeared!"

Du-pal and Ju-hee were awake by now, but Han-su was nowhere to be found.

"He didn't go into one of the rooms, did he?"

"Or maybe he ran into... someone lost, like the rule said?"

Everyone desperately tried to piece together what had happened, but there was no way to know for certain.

And they certainly could not start opening the endless succession of Room 666 doors.

Su-myeon noticed Ju-hee hesitating in front of one of them, clearly considering whether to open it, and stopped her.

Better not to open Room 666.

"I think... he may have gone on ahead."

The others clearly needed more than that before they would accept his conclusion, so Su-myeon explained.

"If he encountered the entity mentioned in the rules and somehow got dragged into dealing with it...... then there are only two possibilities. Either it's already too late, or he got away safely and went upstairs."

Han-su was a man with a strong sense of responsibility and plenty of courage.

The most plausible scenario Su-myeon could reconstruct was that something had appeared, and Han-su had deliberately drawn it away before disappearing with it.

"What did all of you think when I disappeared?"

Su-myeon asked the group, who were still hesitant.

Ju-hee considered the question with a grave expression before answering quietly.

"......We thought that if we found the way up, we'd meet you there eventually, since we were all heading to the same place."

"It's the same now. And Han-su is a detective on top of that. He'll handle himself better than I did."

Su-myeon's reassurance, combined with Ju-hee's answer, finally calmed the group enough for them to start moving again.

They were still worried.

But there was nothing else they could do.

For now, all they could do was follow the corridor ahead.

"Candy.... This candy! It was in my bag?"

Only a few steps later, they found a piece of candy lying on the floor.

It looked as though someone had deliberately dropped it to mark the path.

Han-su.

One by one, they picked up the candies as they followed the trail.

Eventually, the corridor split at a fork.

And there too, a piece of candy lay before one of the paths, clearly indicating which direction Han-su had taken.

"......Stairs."

Before long, the group found a staircase leading to the floor above.

Compared to the other floors, finding the stairs had been almost anticlimactically easy.

But Han-su was nowhere to be seen.

Only the candies he had dropped remained behind.

"Let's head up for now."

If Han-su had made it this far, then naturally, he would have continued upstairs.

Suppressing their unease, the group climbed the staircase.

The floor they reached was the VIP Lounge.

One floor above that—

Ground Level.

The surface.

Freedom.

Clinging to that fact, they stepped into the lounge.

And there, they found the familiar silhouette they had been desperately hoping to see.

"Han-su...! Han-su is over there!"

After all her worrying, Ju-hee was so relieved that she immediately started toward him.

Su-myeon grabbed her arm.

"Shh."

A vast open space.

A long banquet table stood atop a checkered tile floor that resembled an empty chessboard.

Han-su was not the only one seated there.

A massive, leather-skinned mass with its belly split open, its entrails spilling across the tabletop.

Grotesque gelatinous plants covered in purple tentacles.

Things with utterly abnormal forms crowded around Han-su, occupying every seat at the table.