Lee Seon-hae sotis teased Hong Gyeong-yeon for being a coward.
The reason was nothing grand. He trembled and quaked until his temper got the better of him, at which point he erupted—just like a small dog. Lee Seon-hae found this rather pitiable.
'At least small dogs are cute.'
And Hong Gyeong-yeon was not cute. The odds of his opponent letting it slide were low. He must have known that himself, yet he couldn't fix it. If that wasn't a coward, what was?
"……."
"……."
"……."
And so ca the fateful three-way standoff.
Director Lee Seon-hae called out to Hong Gyeong-yeon.
"Writer Hong."
"When did you get here… sorry, should I shut up?"
"Let
think about it for a second."
The thing was, Hong Gyeong-yeon normally held himself in check. He was a bomb that took a trendous amount to detonate.
'He does try to keep his wits about him, in his own way. As long as his life and soone else's aren't being threatened at the sa ti. Even if that state isn't what you'd objectively call rational, still….'
Director Lee Seon-hae looked at the figure they were facing off against. The massive fra. The nacing knife. Water dripping steadily from the clothes. And the open door of Room 703.
Hmm.
"……."
"Should I shut up?"
"…Yeah, please."
"……."
"Good boy."
Hong Gyeong-yeon's fury was probably justified.
But the world doesn't run on justice. The saying about fists being closer than the law exists for a reason. In the director's assessnt, even two-on-one against the Room 703 guest, they'd lose.
'Isn't there a staff call bell or sothing around here?'
Given she hadn't spotted one exploring the 21st-floor corridor, it was unlikely to be here either. A hollow laugh escaped on its own.
'Wow, this is actually terrifying.'
Lee Seon-hae realized afresh how much care Lee Yeon-woo had taken. Hadn't he assigned them to the floor farthest from the seventh? But here, there was no one to call for help.
"……."
CLACK—!
Lee Seon-hae extended her collapsible baton and stepped forward.
"…Gyeong-yeon, over here."
"Yes."
"When your life looks like it's hanging by a thread, you could at least hold back instead of charging in the other direction. Thanks to you, my heart nearly dropped out too."
"I have no excuse."
Director Lee Seon-hae stepped in front of Hong Gyeong-yeon. However it looked to the other party, she needed to block this enraged chihuahua from lunging out.
"Hello there, sir? My goodness… what a lovely dawn."
"……."
"Please ignore what's in my hand. What you're holding looked so nacing it gave
a fright. Oh, how scary."
"……."
"No answer? You must be the shy type."
"……."
"…Not even looking this way?"
The figure's gaze was locked on Hong Gyeong-yeon.
'Ah.'
He'd apparently raised quite the hell in front of it. Awkward.
'I'd planned to draw its attention and tell him to go get help from the staff, but… in a situation like this, the staff probably wouldn't cooperate willingly either.'
She'd confird on her way down that the signal was dead again. But if it was the hotel's doing, it might work farther from the building.
'For that, one of us would need to get out.'
Leaving Hong Gyeong-yeon behind was unreliable given his behavior, and sending him away was impossible when the Room 703 guest's eyes wouldn't leave him.
"…Gyeong-yeon, try one step back."
"…All right."
And then.
"Oh boy."
The figure also took one step forward.
"Hey, hey, hey—don't move, don't move."
"I'm trying. Even if the director tells
to run, I'm staying right here."
"No need to rush headlong into death."
But then, what could they do?
'Staff summons is off the table. Phone signal's dead… given the physical build, running is tough too? No, wait—we're the ones closer to the elevator. If I ti it right, it might be possible.'
The speed of the elevator doors closing. The distance between them and the Room 703 guest. She estimated the dangerous figure's physical capabilities. But it would be a difficult gamble.
'Or we could maintain this standoff and wait for the staff to sense sothing's wrong. Given my family, they wouldn't let
die or get badly hurt here….'
She was in the middle of forecasting worst-case futures when—
"……."
Suddenly, silence descended.
Ting—
"……?"
A small… bell sounded.
"…Is that…."
Ting.
Ting.
Ting….
"……?"
"Oh—"
The mont the clear sound cut off, staff poured out from the elevator and ergency stairwell.
"…! Wait…."
"Wh-what?"
Hands clasped politely, smiling faces. Postures as unruffled as refined dolls, as though the line between humanity and the uncanny had collapsed. Wearing chanical smiles, they blocked the path in front of Lee Seon-hae and Hong Gyeong-yeon.
Two more staff stood behind the Room 703 guest. Behind them, the rest moved into position.
"What is—"
The large man's gaze turned toward the open guest room.
"……."
"……."
…A pale hand erged from beyond the door.
"…Ah."
The staff's hands moved.
One slid clean cotton gloves onto those dripping hands.
Another reverently took the small bell he'd been holding.
Yet another layered a fresh suit over his crumpled shirt.
And the last staff mber placed… a white cloth against his neck.
"……."
Red blood blood across the stark white fabric in an instant.
"Well, well…."
Sweeping back his wet hair, putting on a dry pair of glasses—
"A busy dawn."
The General Manager smiled with a radiance that bordered on the unreal.
The white cloth pressed to his neck soaked through ceaselessly with red, water still dripping from beneath his new suit, yet his voice held not a tremor.
"First, I must offer an apology to everyone gathered here. To have allowed such a disturbance at a hotel where guests should rest in comfort—it was a trendous discourtesy."
"……."
"That our valued guests were subjected to discomfort is entirely the fault of myself, the General Manager. If you would grant
the chance to make ands, I could ask for nothing more…."
Soundless, composed steps.
He slipped naturally between the facing parties. Monts later, Lee Yeon-woo stood looking up at the equally drenched, towering man.
"Would you understand?"
"……."
The man's cold gaze bore into the General Manager's face.
In place of an answer, heavy silence. Lee Yeon-woo interpreted it as assent, his eyes curving languidly—just as they had the mont he'd erged from Room 703.
"Yes, thank you."
—The target had
'…shifted.'
It wasn't her imagination.
'The attention fixed on Gyeong-yeon is moving to Mr. Yeon-woo.'
Lee Seon-hae gauged the danger and studied Lee Yeon-woo. She could see why Hong Gyeong-yeon had lost his composure.
"You look very… unwell, Mr. Yeon-woo?"
"A competent operator is bound to get caught up in all manner of incidents, wouldn't you say."
"I don't think this is a joking situation."
Red blood seeped along the deep black bruising on his neck. Hidden behind the staff's backs, it wasn't easy to see, but he was still desperately pressing down on the wound between his neck and clavicle.
She could even make out the faint trembling of hands that wouldn't hold their strength.
'No, that's not all.'
In the droplets falling at Lee Yeon-woo's feet, vivid red was blending in.
"…Are you hurt?"
"I wonder if you'd believe
if I said no."
"Of course I would—coming from our kind General Manager."
"Then I have no choice but to tell you I'm not hurt."
He spoke while still looking at the Room 703 guest.
"Sir."
A voice lowered to a whisper.
"This is not your room."
It was the kind of refined composure that only soone who had repeated the sa thing tens, hundreds of tis could produce.
"If you wish, I can personally escort you back. Is there any room service you desire? Or perhaps an item you require? Our hotel is prepared to provide everything a guest might request."
"……."
"However, sir."
A voice so steady it seed light.
"This is not your room."
But it was resolute.
It was brainwashing cloaked in courtesy, an irresistible suggestion, an absolute command issued by this hotel to a re lodger.
At least, that was how it sounded to Lee Seon-hae's ears….
"……."
"……."
What expression was he wearing?
Lee Seon-hae found herself wondering, without aning to. She couldn't define what she herself was feeling. She was rely watching this scene from within a floating, detached sensation, as though separated from reality.
And then—
'…Ah.'
After a brief silence, Lee Yeon-woo turned his head and looked at the group.
As if confirming their safety, an expression of fleeting relief. Then he restored a smile without a crack and continued his reception.
"Our staff will assist in escorting you both—"
…But, wait—hold on.
"Behind you."
"Ah."
CRACK—!!
"……!!"
The knife plunged in.
"…You insane son of a—!"
"Hong Gyeong-yeon, stop!!"
Lee Seon-hae caught Hong Gyeong-yeon the instant he was about to explode. She shoved him back and retreated a step. The staff once again cut off the path in front of them with chanical precision.
But Lee Seon-hae saw it clearly. The Room 703 guest had exploited the split second Lee Yeon-woo's gaze turned away to drive a knife into his back.
'What kind of animal—he looks away for one second and this happens!'
Cough—with a small cough, dark red blood surged from Lee Yeon-woo's mouth.
"Ugh,"
The instant Lee Yeon-woo's fra began to crumble, staff on either side seized him. It was closer to forcibly propping him upright than supporting him. As though he must never be allowed to falter.
The entire sequence was grotesque. It provoked a physiological revulsion distinct from the fear of a threat.
"…Insane."
Simply because it was nauseating.
"……."
"Ha…."
From inside Lee Yeon-woo's throat, the sound of blood boiling seeped out.
"My apologies,"
Glk—the faint noise of blood backflowing wedged its way into the corridor's silence. It was almost like an auditory hallucination.
"My apologies. You must return to your room now."
"……."
"Our… hk, our staff. Will escort… you."
"……."
"Tomorrow…."
"Are you going to be all right."
"Yes."
"Tomorrow, then."
"……."
"…Yes."
A question, or a confirmation.
"Understood."
This was no longer a place for them to remain, nor a situation for them to intervene.
Director Lee Seon-hae, with those words as the last, moved her heavy feet. She held onto the panicking Hong Gyeong-yeon and pulled him along. True to her word, the staff graciously assisted their departure.
Hong Gyeong-yeon glanced at Lee Seon-hae. The hand gripping his sleeve was trembling.
"Director."
"I'm fine."
With the staff, the two boarded the elevator, and the doors closed.
"Let's hope for the best."
A hotel of this scale couldn't be without a dical team. There had to be equipnt and staff capable of performing surgery, she told herself.
"And you… you… you absolute…."
"Should I kneel?"
"You really are…."
"Should I kowtow?"
"Let's assess the situation first."
"Yes, Director."
"I can't take this. Ha, at this hour of the dawn…."
The high-performance elevator arrived at the 21st floor in no ti.
The staff guided them to their room with impeccable posture. Yet that quiet movent, laced with silence, sohow looked closer to surveillance than guidance.
'No—it is surveillance.'
An unspoken pressure: don't dig any deeper. It also felt like a warning that doing so would be in everyone's best interest. Lee Yeon-woo's face, always dodging any revelation of the hotel's true nature, flickered through her mind.
Standing before her room, Lee Seon-hae couldn't hold back and called out to a staff mber.
"Excuse ."
"……."
"Um, Mr. Yeon-woo… will the General Manager be all right?"
"……."
The staff mber stared at her.
"He—"
But sothing was off.
'What.'
A gaze without a single drop of emotion. Eyes that didn't so much as twitch. Lee Seon-hae read a strange deficiency in that stare.
Then the staff mber artificially curved its eyelids and "produced" a smile.
"……."
"……."
Instead of answering, the staff mber gave a deep bow. It was a response that could have been affirmation, denial, or a failure to comprehend the question entirely.
"…Even now, you won't speak."
The one-sidedness of the exchange was sohow agonizing. Lee Seon-hae, still holding Hong Gyeong-yeon, entered the room.
Hotel, staff, guests—all of it was wrong. But what twisted Lee Seon-hae's gut the most was sothing else entirely. In this grotesque space, only Lee Yeon-woo looked like a "person."
Her stomach turned. It was revolting. Why did a place like this have to exist?
"…The end of days, truly."
***
"……."
The seventh-floor corridor. In that place now empty save for staff, Lee Yeon-woo—
—vomited blood.
"Uurgh, BWEHH……!"
He vomited so spectacularly he dared compare it to Niagara Falls. Bright red blood thoroughly soaked the floor, and only after a prolonged bout of hacking and retching did Lee Yeon-woo barely pull himself together.
It didn't actually hurt, mind—blood had just pooled up.
"Hack, gkh…bweh…."
"……."
"Ha…."
Ah.
They nearly caught him.
'If they'd seen this, I'd have been hauled off to NASA.'
He'd have spent his life as a test sample undergoing human experintation. By any rational standard, standing upright with injuries like these was well beyond the domain of the human.
'With injuries this severe, surviving at all defies reason.'
To enurate his current injuries: the variety was impressive. His neck had been punctured by a water ghost's nails, the front of his body had been bitten and torn, and a knife was embedded in his back as though staking a gate.
'At this point, dying would seem like the polite human thing to do.'
Apparently this body had given up on being human so ti ago. And that was absurd in its own right. Spineless wretch—I haven't given up, so why have you?
"…To think I can still be alive through all this, it's truly beyond reason…."
Lee Yeon-woo steadied himself, fighting for each breath.
This was no ti to marvel at the mysteries of his body's biology. The problem was how to face those two sharp-eyed guests tomorrow morning. Writer Hong Gyeong-yeon, in particular, had extensive dical knowledge.
The neck wound and bite marks could be covered well enough to go unseen, but the problem was the penalty inflicted by the 'Drenched One.'
'I'd accounted for it, but…… had I known the penalty would trigger this imdiately, I'd have sent the guests upstairs in a hurry. Thanks to that, things got quite harrowing.'
It was the sa situation as in the lobby before.
When a human guest's path overlapped with the 'Drenched One's,' it initiated pursuit. It wouldn't charge at the two human guests with a knife the way they feared, but "pursuit" was a serious threat.
All Lee Yeon-woo had done was perform a Distraction, just as before.
'The situation was far more direct than in the lobby, but the penalty is the sa.'
Elevated nightti nightmare frequency. Hypothermia. Attack from Distraction. Injury. And hemorrhaging.
"……."
This ti, of all places, the back.
"…Last ti it was the hands."
He was a bit displeased about that.
'Writer Hong Gyeong-yeon won't think it's strange, will he?'
The neck could be passed off as a scratch. Bla it on the bruising playing tricks on the eye. The area between the neck and clavicle could be refrad as a stab rather than a bite.
'But being run clean through the back is hard to explain away.'
Humans aren't as sturdy as fictional characters. Normally, a stab to the back is life-threatening. Too many vital organs.
'…Left dial scapular region. Intercostal penetration. Looks like around the sixth intercostal space… I sense the intercostal muscles have been severed. What a colorful day.'
Pleural damage was a given, so at minimum mild pneumothorax should be factored in. Had the blade reached the lung parenchyma, hemoptysis would have followed, along with severe respiratory distress.
'Given that I can still speak, it's not that severe? No—maybe it is.'
For a normal human, forget conversation—stringing a sentence together without gasping for air should have been impossible.
That's how it should have been.
"First injuries, and now I have to act out pain on top of it."
"Yes."
"How tireso. The General Manager's workload is excessive."
His body being in tatters was a fact. But this was, ultimately, a ga character's body. Similar to a human's, but different. What this ant was:
The "physiological symptoms" that should accompany injury were also, for the most part, not reflected.
'At this point, it might be more accurate to call this body a blood-bag mimicking a human rather than an actual human body… why does it feel like, the more ti passes, I'm drifting not just past human rights violations but away from the concept of human rights itself.'
The blood he'd just vomited was because of that. Currently, close to half of his muscles and organs had been replaced with blood. A consequence of trying to compensate for being half-eaten during the 'Drenched One's' bathtub event.
'Still, a stab this deep isn't instant death.'
There was hope.
'Even Writer Hong Gyeong-yeon won't think it that strange. He seed to be in a state of panic… if it cos down to it, I can claim the writer saw wrong.'
No matter how extensive his dical knowledge, he wasn't a doctor. He couldn't insist to the bitter end.
"Seeing my luck this foul, I must have racked up no small debt in a past life. The mont human guests enter, nothing ever slides by quietly."
"Yes."
"Which part are you agreeing with."
"Yes."
"Then again, even you must find my state beyond words."
He picked Coco up.
"With injuries this severe, how many days does recovery typically take?"
"Days."
"Yes, I know that much. Overnight recovery is out of the question. Short phrases might be manageable in a day, but to speak and walk properly—five days at minimum?"
"Yes."
"I'll need to downplay the injuries. If I call the depth about two centiters and attribute the blood to a split inside the mouth… they shouldn't think it strange if I'm active by this afternoon. Right?"
"Right."
"Good."
Lee Yeon-woo turned his gaze. Toward the staff he'd summoned at dawn.
They were diligently wiping blood and water from the corridor. Hard workers, all. He felt deep solidarity and sympathy as a fellow laborer.
Pitiful employees who probably couldn't even get the four basic insurances….
"This place is an insane black company. The mont the tutorial ends, I'm overhauling the hotel's welfare."
"No."
"I suppose that would be managent's position."
"No!"
"The hotel's structure itself is rotten. With labor conditions like these, what staff mber in their right mind would try to endure? At this rate, overwork will kill people before the monster guests do."
"No!"
"Not people, you say? That's discrimination, Coco."
"No…!"
Ignored. A truly wicked cat.
***
"Oh, Mr. Yeon-woo?"
"…Yes?"
And so, the next day.
And so, the next day. Lee Seon-hae and Hong Gyeong-yeon could only et Lee Yeon-woo in the late afternoon as the sun hung low.
"…What the f—?!"
Hong Gyeong-yeon was aghast. No—he shouldn't be out here already?!
"Why, why, why are you in the lobby already…?! Shouldn't you not be here right now?!"
"My, why wouldn't I be? This is my job."
"With injuries like that, you should be flat on your back in bed…!"
"It seems yesterday's commotion gave the writer quite a scare. It was a minor abrasion, lighter than it looked, so please don't trouble yourself."
"How can you even say—!"
"I must apologize for causing confusion through the hotel's negligence."
A response so smooth it bordered on brazen.
Lee Yeon-woo checked the clock, then asked them with courtesy.
"It's late, but I imagine you have much to say, so I'd like to arrange a setting."
"……."
"What do you think?"
"…Yes, that sounds good."
The director nodded.
"We were actually coming to say goodbye."
It seed about ti to leave this hotel.
Reviews
All reviews (0)