Chapter 62: The Witch’s Forest (5)

The only thing he currently lacked was the third, so Ju-hee nodded confidently.

"Han-su has it, so let's bring him in right away."

The incident involving the owner of Room 404 had proven that someone connected to a ghost story could attack them in reality.

Because of that, the prescription drugs and special items had been entrusted to the person most capable of protecting himself.

'Isn't she being a little too fearless?'

Even after hearing Ju-hee's explanation, Su-myeon was at something of a loss.

Still, separate from that, a part of him was genuinely glad that someone had appeared.

It seemed humans really were social animals.

Two people were simply more reassuring than one.

"Don't worry. If he does what I did, he'll...."

Ju-hee approached the lakeshore again, only to stop halfway through her sentence.

Inside the strange violet water.

Far beneath the pale, endless depths that seemed impossibly deep.

A pair of round, wide-open eyes stared up at Ju-hee.

Pupils devoid of life.

Dilated.

Clouded.

Staring.

Without so much as a twitch.

"......."

Were they the eyes of a corpse?

The instant she met their gaze, primal terror crawled up the back of Ju-hee's neck.

"H-how... did you do it? When you pulled me in."

At Ju-hee's suddenly trembling, stammering voice, Su-myeon approached the lakeshore as well.

He saw the same thing and stopped dead.

It was an unpleasant sight, but in fact, it matched what Su-myeon knew about this place far more closely.

So why had the lake looked different before?

"Did you knock first on your side, by any chance? I think that had some kind of effect."

Su-myeon voiced the reason he himself had approached the lakeshore earlier.

Otherwise, there would have been no reason for him to deliberately touch that water.

"That's right."

Ju-hee nodded, answering in a deliberately steady voice.

Han-su had seen her do it.

He had witnessed the entire process that had brought her here.

"Han-su saw it too, so he'll definitely do the exact same thing."

Even the most inflexible detective had personally experienced the consistency of ghost-story rules.

He would repeat Ju-hee's actions in order to enter this place.

"......."

But no matter how long they waited, nothing happened.

The water near the shore never stirred again.

Worse, the number of heads staring up at them had increased to five.

'Something went wrong.'

Su-myeon could arrive at no other conclusion.

***

Damn it, damn it, damn it!

A man drenched in sweat tore recklessly through the forest, shoving his way through waist-high grass.

He had no idea how many hours he had been running.

He couldn't tell whether a day had passed.

Or two.

His phone, useless without a signal, had already run out of battery and become nothing more than a lump of metal.

And thanks to the vicious hunger gnawing at him, every step was agony.

The starvation was so intense that it felt like pain, as though his stomach had dissolved in its own acid and collapsed in on itself.

And along with that pain came one increasingly certain, dreadful realization.

He was never going to escape this place.

"What did I do wrong for this to happen to me?! Let me out! I said let me out!"

The man screamed into the empty forest.

If he had done something wrong, when had it begun?

When he'd foolishly decided that taking the apartment stairs instead of the elevator might count as exercise?

Or when he'd happened to run into the owner of Room 404 and, instead of simply ignoring him, had looked at him closely?

Maybe things could still have ended there.

"Help me! Is anyone there?! I said, is anyone there?! Fuck!"

Driven into a panic, he shouted whatever came to mind and kept running.

The posts he had uploaded to the internet.

Emboldened by all the attention people had given him, he had done something utterly pointless.

That had been his greatest mistake.

That cookie lying on the stairs.

He should never have picked it up...!

"Ugh...!"

Something that might have been sweat or tears ran past his eyes.

The moment he squeezed them shut, his foot caught on a root hidden in the grass.

He pitched forward, hit the ground hard, flailed wildly, and barely managed to drag himself upright again.

Damp forest soil clung to his clothes, his hands, and his face.

He didn't care.

SHAAAA.

The instant he stopped moving, the only sound left was the leaves rustling in the wind.

That endless sound of leaves.

That sickeningly repetitive sound!

It made him nauseous, as though someone were wringing out his brain.

"Please, please.... Let me out. Let me out...!"

With reason already stripped away, he muttered desperately and somehow staggered back to his feet.

No matter how many times he replayed it, the moment he had suddenly found himself in this forest made no sense.

He couldn't stay hidden in the internet café forever, so once morning came, he had eventually returned home.

'I am absolutely never going near the emergency stairs again.'

With that resolution fixed firmly in his mind, he had stood in front of the apartment building.

He carefully entered the code for the shared entrance, then headed toward the mailboxes out of habit.

'Habit is a frightening thing.'

In fact, his own automatic behavior had eased his tension for just a moment.

It was only an apartment building, after all.

And the owner of Room 404 was just some middle-aged man, wasn't he?

If he tried anything like that again, the man would record it and report him to the police.

Having reassured himself that way, he took a bill from the mailbox and turned around.

"......!"

Without warning, he was standing on the emergency stairs.

A closed fire door stood before him.

Beside it was the floor number.

[4]

When?

How?

Why?

Amid the flood of questions, he realized that what he was holding was no longer the bill.

It was a cookie.

A gingerbread man with its neck snapped.

From the broken edge oozed a thick, deep-red liquid.

"Agh!"

Startled, he hurled the cookie away and frantically wiped the liquid from his hand onto his clothes.

But there was none of the stickiness he would have expected from ordinary syrup or jam.

The liquid only smeared redder across his skin, making his stomach twist with revulsion.

Beep-beep-boop.

From beyond the fire door came the sound of someone's front-door lock being opened.

Even though broad daylight surrounded him, an instinctive certainty that something was terribly wrong seized his mind.

He immediately ran back down the stairs.

[3]

The instant he saw the third-floor marker, rational thought deserted him entirely.

"Help me!"

Without a second thought, he rushed onto the floor and pounded on the first apartment door he saw.

"Somebody! Somebody, please help...!"

He hammered on the door, mashed the bell repeatedly, then instinctively grabbed the handle.

Normally, he would have stopped himself.

He would have thought, No, absolutely not. That's trespassing.

But right now, all that mattered was getting inside.

'The moment I get in, I'll report it.'

If I call 112 first and explain while I'm making the report, they'll understand.

That was what he told himself.

But the instant he stepped through the entryway, he faltered.

"......."

Room 304 was empty.

It was clearly filled with furniture and household belongings, yet empty was the only word that came to mind.

As he walked, pale dust transferred onto the soles of his shoes, leaving footprints in his wake.

Even the air smelled stale, as though the apartment hadn't been ventilated in years....

"...!"

That was as far as his thoughts got.

Something slammed into his back.

He pitched forward helplessly.

And when he opened his eyes again, he was in a forest.

A vicious, endlessly repeating forest.

"Ugh... huhk......."

Somehow, driven by the terror surging through him, he had kept running.

But his body had already reached its limit.

Every part of him ached from the endless sprinting, and the relentless hunger had become unbearable.

He couldn't get up anymore.

'I don't want to die.... I don't want to die......!'

But that didn't mean he intended to give up.

Driven by nothing but the raw desire to live, he flailed his hands wildly around him.

Whatever blades of grass his dirt-covered fingers caught, he snapped them off and tried to shove them into his mouth.

The overwhelming craving insisted that if he could only put something—anything—into his stomach, he would survive.

Then an unfamiliar scent reached his nose.

Warm.

Rich.

Savory....

"......!"

The body he had been certain could no longer move sprang upright on instinct.

When he lifted his head, an enormous candy house stood before him.

It had definitely not been there a moment earlier.

Its appearance was obviously suspicious.

But the thought of questioning it never even crossed his mind.

Food had appeared in front of him.

That was enough.

He lunged toward it and tore a chunk from the wall, which gave off the rich aroma of butter and baked flour.

"B... bread...!"

Bread.

Crisp on the outside, soft and moist inside, packed with red syrup!

Even the unidentifiable crimson liquid that had disgusted him before now seemed like life-giving water.

His hands were filthy, thick with dirt, but he didn't have enough presence of mind to wipe them clean.

With both hands, he ripped wildly at the wall and crammed a huge mouthful inside.

A mellow sweetness and soft texture filled his mouth.

Whenever his throat clogged, he drank the syrup trickling down like water.

Whenever he grew tired of tearing into the bread, he simply turned his head.

All he had to do was rip off one of the chunks of chocolate stuck beside it and eat that instead.

Yet no matter how hungry he had been, no matter how long he kept stuffing food into his mouth, the hunger never faded.

Once he got through this feeling, he could think about everything else again.

'That's all I have to do.'

He convinced himself of that and grabbed the candy house once more.

But his resolve was pitifully weak.

And the craving was viciously persistent.

One more.

Just one more.

The motion born from that thought continued endlessly, without pause.

Until at last he fell into such a trance that even the thought that he should stop disappeared completely.

Tap tap.

The wall of the candy house rang.

'What is this?'

For the first time, a thought unrelated to hunger surfaced in his mind.

And before the bewildered man's eyes, another man's face abruptly appeared.