Chapter 9: Shopping Mall (4)

[9. Please turn in any lost items you find to the nearest Customer Service Center. Anything claiming to be the owner of an item is not human.]

“Can you survive like that? Come on, walk a little faster!”

Ki San-hyeok cackled as he smacked the back of the young man’s head.

At some point, his group—just under ten people in total—had split neatly into three types.

Those who sided with Ki San-hyeok and shoved the weaker members from behind.

Those weaker members being shoved around.

And the bystanders who did nothing.

“If you keep dragging your feet like that, that monster’s going to come over and gut you like a piglet!”

Ki San-hyeok himself never broke the rules.

He simply forced someone else to do it while directing them from safely behind.

The young man he was pushing was not only carrying the bulging bag by himself, but already appeared to be injured.

“I-it’s coming! Mr. San-hyeok! It’s coming!”

As though summoned by the words, the Mad Hatter appeared, its heavy footsteps thundering through the mall.

It stood well over two meters tall, with a comically oversized top hat perched on its head.

Its proportions were almost like those of a children’s toy.

But whenever the red lights flashed across its broad, smiling face, there was nothing childish about it.

It was grotesque.

The instant the Mad Hatter came into view, Ki San-hyeok and his gang scattered like cockroaches and disappeared into hiding.

The only person who failed to escape was the injured young man carrying all their luggage.

“N-no! No! Take me with you! Take me!”

His desperate scream was painfully vivid, like something torn straight from a nightmare.

The miserable cry of someone who wanted to live.

A terrified sob.

Su-myeon wanted to cover his ears.

Instead, he stood.

“Let’s raise the shutter.”

At his words, Ju-hee immediately got to her feet as though she had been waiting for him to say it.

If they heard someone screaming like that and did nothing to help, the memory would probably haunt them for the rest of their lives.

But how were they supposed to raise it?

Ju-hee looked at him with the question written plainly across her face.

Su-myeon headed straight for the store computer.

“It’s connected to the system, so we can’t force it open manually.”

The monitor was flooded with scarlet.

He did not even want to touch it, but Su-myeon hurriedly opened the security program.

“J-just a second... Mr. Su-myeon!”

“Just wait!”

I can do it in no time, so stop rushing me!

[Happy!Fun!HeIsComing!DoNotForget!Welcome!Together!TrustMe¡OpenUp!Forever!TheDayOfDoom!FestivalOfBlood!]

The desktop was filled with bizarre strings of words.

When Su-myeon clicked the inverted exclamation mark hidden among them, a map of the stores appeared.

Normally, he would have had to explore the Shopping Mall, collect clues, and work out how the system functioned.

But Su-myeon already knew.

Each store shutter was represented by a guillotine icon.

He clicked the guillotine positioned over the entrance to the shoe store.

CLACK-

With a heavy metallic sound, the shutter began to rise.

But there was no time to do anything else.

At that exact moment, a desperate scream tore through the mall.

“U-uaaaaagh!”

Su-myeon snapped his head up.

Beyond Ju-hee’s back, as she stood frozen with both hands covering her mouth....

THUD!

The instant Su-myeon caught sight of the Mad Hatter’s silhouette, he looked away and immediately lowered the shutter again.

They were too late.

The young man had already been caught.

Su-myeon chose not to think too hard about the “something” being torn from him, piece by piece.

“Hrk.”

From the way Ju-hee fought back a retch, Su-myeon could only vaguely recall the execution scene from the game.

Red pixels.

Pink pixels.

That was all it had been on a screen.

Reality was not nearly so merciful.

The young man’s voice gradually weakened into a groan devoid of strength.

The Mad Hatter looked around.

Finding no other living prey nearby, it soon lumbered away and disappeared somewhere deeper into the mall.

“.......”

Once every sound had faded, silence settled over the area.

At some point, even the alarm had stopped.

In the now-quiet Shopping Mall, Ki San-hyeok and his gang emerged from hiding once again.

Where the young man had just been dragged away, only a pool of blood remained.

And beside it lay the heavy bag he had failed to take with him.

“Hey. You carry it this time.”

Ki San-hyeok shoved another person forward and ordered him to pick the bag up off the floor.

Ju-hee’s face had gone pale, and her hands were trembling.

Su-myeon quietly said,

“That should be safe to carry.”

The man forced to take the luggage hesitantly picked up the bag.

The alarm did not sound.

Exactly [N O V E L I G H T] as Su-myeon had expected.

Once the theft had already occurred and the stolen goods had been removed from the store, they were no longer considered Hotel property.

The person picking up the bag with trembling hands was Kim Young-cheol.

Su-myeon knew him well from the game.

Young-cheol was a character who contributed quite a bit to clearing the game, so it was unfortunate to see him caught up with people like this.

“Uaaaaaagh!”

Another distant scream echoed through the mall, chilling enough to raise the hairs on Su-myeon’s neck.

He frowned.

The man who had just been captured was probably being “sorted” by body part right now and transformed into new merchandise by the Mad Hatter.

As Su-myeon thought that, Ki San-hyeok waited until he was certain the alarm would not sound again.

Then he smirked.

“As expected. You can pick up a dead bastard’s stuff.”

Ki San-hyeok was clever enough to interpret the rules in his own way.

After confirming for himself that the Hotel’s rules were absolute, he had begun clearing each floor by exploiting loopholes.

Using other people’s lives as though they were his own spare lives.

“Hold it in.”

Ju-hee’s fists were trembling with rage, but Su-myeon caught her arm and made her sit back down.

If they confronted them now and things turned into a fight, Su-myeon’s side would be at a disadvantage.

Just Su-myeon and Ju-hee would have a hard time taking on that entire group.

Only after Ki San-hyeok and his people had completely disappeared from sight did the two of them raise the shutter again and leave the store.

“Mr. Su-myeon!”

“Su-myeon hyung!”

Fortunately, they had not gone far before running into Han-su and Ha-min.

“Everyone’s safe! You and Ju-hee noona were the only ones we couldn’t contact, so everybody was worried!”

There had been those horrifying screams and that strange laughter as well.

Ha-min looked ready to burst into tears again as he explained that he had nearly died from fear.

While Su-myeon and Ju-hee had been watching Ki San-hyeok’s group and holding their breath, the others seemed to have managed to contact one another by phone.

“Before I entered the store, I saw something like this.”

Han-su pointed toward a pillar beside one of the shops.

A notice had been pasted there like an advertisement, written in pretty handwriting.

[In an emergency, the guillotine will come down, so welcome it with arms wide open!]

“Han-su hyung thought it looked suspicious, so he told everyone not to move and just hide for the time being.”

At Ha-min’s explanation, Ju-hee seemed to misunderstand something.

“Ah... Mr. Su-myeon, you saw that too....”

That warning was probably something only Han-su had managed to notice.

Su-myeon had no idea how Han-su had found it, but he simply nodded.

Their relief at seeing everyone who remained alive and unharmed lasted only a moment.

“More importantly, I think we’re going to have another problem.”

With a troubled expression, Ju-hee explained what she and Su-myeon had witnessed.

Thanks to her curious nature and willingness to speak up, Su-myeon found himself having to explain much less.

“Are you saying that man treats other people like objects?”

“I think it’s worse than that.”

If Ki San-hyeok had genuinely regarded others as nothing more than objects, without any emotion at all, that might actually have been preferable.

Instead, he was the kind of person who went out of his way to mock and humiliate others even when there was no need.

“Human garbage.”

Ha-min’s summary was exactly right.

Unfortunately, that piece of human garbage was trapped in the same isolated space as the rest of them.

Watching everyone grow increasingly uneasy, Su-myeon thought for a moment before quietly offering a suggestion.

“For now, even if it’s a little frustrating, how about we stay here for one more day?”

The moment Su-myeon gave his opinion, Han-su nodded.

“Let’s do that.”

...He doesn’t even ask why.

Is this the protagonist’s level of trust?

Su-myeon felt slightly awkward, but once Han-su agreed, the others nodded without objection as well.

They had originally intended to clear the floors as quickly as possible.

But the situation had become complicated.

It seemed safer to put some distance between themselves and Ki San-hyeok’s group up ahead.

When dealing with lunatics, avoidance was the best strategy.

“Will it be enough if we simply rest here and stay for one day?”

Han-su approached Su-myeon and asked.

Su-myeon was too tired even to question why Han-su was asking him, so he simply nodded.

Since they were staying anyway, it would be better for everyone to gather supplies carefully while they had the chance.

“For now, yes.”

Anything left behind by someone taken away by the Mad Hatter was considered a lost item, even if it had never been merchandise in the first place.

Ki San-hyeok had probably overlooked that part of the rule.

Which meant Young-cheol, who had picked up a lost item, was unlikely to live much longer.

Maybe if we stay here and rest for a day, the group ahead of us will get wiped out on its own.

With that thought, Su-myeon looked at the protagonist standing before him.

“Did you happen to see the new rule?”

Han-su nodded.

Su-myeon asked another question.

“Would you like to go find a lost item with me?”

***

Because everyone was on edge, all five of them ended up moving together in a tight group.

But when they arrived at the blood-soaked scene, the others stopped several steps away.

Only Su-myeon, Han-su, and Ju-hee approached and searched the area.

“Here. They dropped one.”

A single sausage lay in the blood.

Truthfully, Su-myeon did not want to touch it.

But when he thought about the reward waiting for him, he endured his disgust and fished the sausage out.

Watching him, Han-su asked,

“Are you planning to take it to the Customer Service Center?”

“Yes. I don’t think the rule told us to ‘turn it in’ for no reason.”

At Su-myeon’s answer, Han-su searched the surrounding area as well.

But Ki San-hyeok had been thorough.

He had scraped up practically everything before leaving.

With the others trailing after him like chicks following a mother hen, Su-myeon headed toward the Customer Service Center.

Throughout the walk, however, the wall of the Shopping Mall kept drawing his attention.

(^-^)

An emoticon was moving across the wall.

Wherever Su-myeon looked, it somehow appeared directly within his line of sight.

“.......”

It was definitely following him.

Su-myeon was certain that it was the cat doll that had introduced itself as Cheshire.

It felt a little like he had acquired a stalker.

Still, it did not seem particularly threatening.

Especially considering how friendly Cheshire had been toward him.

Just then, Ha-min walked over to Su-myeon, who had been staring at the wall.

“But Su-myeon hyung. Did you buy that?”

“Yeah. At the store earlier.”

Only then did everyone seem to notice the change in Su-myeon’s clothes.

With someone having just died and blood splattered everywhere, either they had failed to notice before or simply had not had the chance to ask.

Su-myeon was now wearing a jacket covered in ornate embroidery that definitely had not been there earlier.

“Uh.... Why would you wear something like that....... No, I mean, your taste is incredible. I-it looks cool!”

The jacket had passed Su-myeon’s own standards of taste.

Apparently, it did not fare quite as well by the standards of a high school student.

At Ha-min’s comment, Cheshire’s emoticon—which had been quietly sneaking along the wall wherever Su-myeon looked—changed expression in displeasure.

(-_-)p

The image appeared to be giving Ha-min a thumbs-down, as though booing his review.

Su-myeon was seeing all kinds of bizarre things.

The others, however, mostly kept their eyes fixed straight ahead, wary of the horrifying stores scattered through the Shopping Mall like traps.

The mall was vast.

Only their footsteps echoed through the silence.

“.......”

Han-su, who had readily taken the lead after saying he knew where the Customer Service Center was, suddenly stopped.

When the others caught up, they saw why.

The Customer Service Center was packed tightly with mannequins.

They sat crowded together inside, filling the room.

After taking in the sight, Su-myeon stepped forward.

“Just in case, everyone stay outside. And don’t look inside.”

Han-su still tried to follow him, but Su-myeon lightly held him back.

“I’ll be fine. Stay with the others.”

Su-myeon entered alone and turned toward the familiar spot.

Beside the entrance stood a machine that dispensed numbered tickets.

The tickets were divided according to the purpose of the visit.

[Heart Retrieval] [Blood Intake] [Pancreas Extraction] [Lost Item Report]

Ah.

I really hate this.

Knowing what it was did not make it any less awful.

Su-myeon carefully lifted his hand toward the machine, paying absolute attention to make sure he did not press the wrong button.

Then—

a voice suddenly whispered right beside his ear.

“Excuse me....”