Chapter 5
[21F]
…
[17F]
……
The elevator continued to stop at every floor as it descended.
It was slowly going down toward the 1st floor.
And.
[5F]
We arrived at that horrific floor number again.
“Here?”
Everyone rembered.
It was the floor where the grandfather had gotten off.
“Ah....”
Everyone had a distressed expression.
They might confirm the grandfather’s life or death, but in the worst case, they might face a tragedy they didn't want to see.
“…….”
The female student turned her head away.
The middle-aged woman also hung her head low to avoid the sight.
Because they were too filled with terror to look directly.
I was staring forward, tense.
[The doors are opening.]
Whir.
The doors were opening like Pandora’s box.
It was originally an empty lobby, but this ti, a quiet incense was rising like mist.
There were no bloodstains, no grandfather, no one to be seen.
“There’s no one here.”
Everyone stared blankly ahead with bewildered expressions.
What on earth happened to the grandfather?
It was around the ti such a question would not go away.
“Kyah!”
An unknown roar.
Then, a being with two red eyes slowly began to appear from the darkness.
“Who is it?”
Reddish, bloodshot eyes.
Foaming at the mouth.
Even rotting skin.
Because of the light from the elevator, the monster's identity was revealed as it drew closer.
“Grandfather?”
An appearance transford into sothing like a zombie.
“Grandfather, are you okay?”
I shouted.
There was no answer.
Just Grrrr.
There was only the sight of the grandfather spitting out foam and vomiting blood while twisting his entire body and making grotesque movents.
Awe-inspiring.
Terrifying.
Grotesque.
All sorts of emotions were ssily mixed and blended together.
This ti, the female student was faster than .
She hurriedly pressed the close button.
“Let’s go down quickly.”
A horrific tragedy.
The miserable end of soone who got off at the wrong floor.
At that mont, I recalled the last words the grandfather had spoken.
“Everyone, be careful.”
I felt a surge of emotion at those words.
Sadness and regret.
Pity and anguish for him having t such an end were spreading through my body.
“Sob.”
The female student was shedding tears.
The middle-aged woman’s expression was on the verge of crying, and the child buried their face behind their mother and hid.
I, too, was on the verge of losing my mind from feelings of sadness and anger.
“Not yet.”
I must survive.
I beca even more determined.
“I have a guess about the aning of the incense. Could it be incense for the victims who got off on that floor?”
“…….”
Incense to pray for the repose of the victims.
Is it really incense for those who beca monsters like zombies?
Perhaps.
It also ant that there were more of those zombie-like victims on the floors where incense was lit.
[Moving down to the next floor.]
This cursed elevator.
I was filled with the determination to uncover the truth at the end of it.
[4F]
[It is the 4th floor.]
Nothing happened here.
[3F]
It was the sa here.
But the floor below that was the problem again.
[2F]
[It is the 2nd floor.]
This was where the man had gotten off.
It was the floor where the first person to get off had been sacrificed.
“What about the man?”
No one could look straight ahead.
Because the man's end would likely be the sa as the grandfather's.
[Those who wish to get off, please co forward.]
[…….]
[The doors are opening.]
I had never wished so much for them not to open like this.
But it was cruel.
As if determined to make us see that sight in the end.
Like an emotionless machine, the elevator opened its doors.
And.
We witnessed that horrific sight again.
Watching that unavoidable mont once more, we were swept away by despair.
“So that's what happens when you die, right?”
The middle-aged woman asked.
Instead of an answer, I nodded.
The female student was already covering her face, which was a ss of tears.
The atmosphere reached its absolute worst.
'I want to get out right now.'
Everyone had only that thought.
[The doors are closing.]
The hellish sight was closed off.
Now that we had seen the horrific ends of the man and the grandfather.
We were now heading toward the final 1st floor.
“Now it's the last one.”
Next was the 1st floor.
Everyone waited for the mont to leave the elevator with the sa hope.
It was then.
It was the mont an anomaly occurred.
[Moving up to the next floor.]
What?
It's not going down any further?
The elevator did not descend to the 1st floor but headed back up instead.
“This makes no sense.”
The female student pressed the ergency bell in shock, but there was no response.
“Hahaha.”
The female student let out a hollow laugh.
It was a tone of voice that contained a state of mind on the verge of going crazy.
“I see. That's it. You intended to make sure no one could get out of here.”
And she despaired.
“So that no one can get out alive.”
A heavy atmosphere settled in.
Only the female student's despairing screams and sobs filled the space.
“Sob, sob, sob.”
Crying doesn't provide answers.
In the silence, I finally had to bring up another thought I'd had from the very beginning.
“You should stop with the jokes.”
I spat out the words for soone to hear.
“This elevator was strange from the very start.”
My words echoed loudly inside the elevator.
It was a power even I hadn't known I possessed.
The female student, who had only been crying, and the middle-aged woman, who had been shedding tears in despair, reacted to my words.
“Mister?”
Well.
I’m only 25 years old.
But I guess to a student, I’m a ‘mister.’
“Yeah.”
I nodded.
“There was sothing strange from the start.”
“What kind of thing?”
“I felt a sense of dissonance as I got on the elevator.”
Dissonance.
A feeling of sothing being unharmonious and sohow awkward.
Unfamiliar.
Sothing is different.
I’d had those thoughts from the very beginning.
“Unlike other places, this elevator doesn’t have that.”
“Pardon?”
The female student and the middle-aged woman scanned every corner of the elevator.
It was just an ordinary interior, and there was nothing strange.
“It doesn’t have it.”
“What is it?”
“A mirror.”
An elevator without a mirror.
Elevators installed in apartnts, whether new or old, always have mirrors.
“Our apartnt originally had mirrors here and here.”
I pointed to the left and right walls.
The elevator mirrors that had been there as recently as this morning were missing here.
In fact, because I often fell asleep due to narcolepsy, I had a thod of rembering that was different from others.
The habit of rembering things exactly as they appeared in my field of vision had beco like a special ability.
I could take a ntal picture of a situation like a photograph and rember it.
As clearly as a photo.
“Why would they be gone?”
“I was curious too, so I thought about it.”
The reason for the mirrors' absence wasn't the important part.
“Why should only the mirrors be gone? I think there’s a reason they shouldn’t be here.”
I looked around.
“Look, the mister and the grandfather got off at the wrong floors and turned into monsters. Ti and space have sohow changed. This elevator must be the sa.”
“It’s a plausible hypothesis.”
“Yeah.”
I felt like I was gradually finding the answer.
A hypothesis can beco a conspiracy theory.
However, it could also be the process of reaching out through pitch-black darkness to find the right path.
The reason mirrors must be absent.
“Mirrors are objects that reflect things. Maybe soone removed them because they hated being reflected in them?”
It was a new hypothesis.
“For example, if they don’t show up in mirrors.”
The female student got goosebumps at my words.
“A ghost?”
“It’s not out of the question. This situation can’t be explained otherwise.”
A world turned into zombies.
An elevator operated by a ghost.
An urban legend.
If that was the reality we faced, we had to look into it.
“And there was one more strange thing.”
“Pardon?”
“Soone among us kept saying things that seed to lead us on.”
Having narcolepsy, I rember everything.
Since I ruined things by constantly falling asleep, I tended to rember as much as possible or at least take notes.
It’s hard at first, but mory also improves the more you use it.
“The person who said this elevator would go to the top at first. In fact, there was no such thing in that strange guided announcent.”
The female student thought deeply.
However, the situation was so urgent that she couldn't rember minor details.
But I, who rembered the situation like a video or individual photographs, rembered everything from the voice announcent to the elevator scenery without exception.
“And if you’re a resident here, you press the elevator buttons every day, so is there even a person who doesn't know how many floors the apartnt has? Yet, there was exactly one person here who asked.”
“Pardon?”
The top floor of this apartnt is the 24th floor. No resident gets confused about the top floor of the apartnt they live in and asks about it.
“Also, the person who kept suggesting we get off whenever there was an opportunity. The person who told others to get off instead of themselves. Especially the person who said we should go out at the top floor because it had opened to the outside.”
I knew the person who said all these things. I rembered. The female student seed to be gradually realizing it too.
“I like ghost stories and mystery novels. In those, there was always a culprit hiding inside, pretending not to be.”
That’s right. This was what I wanted to say. The final hypothesis.
The culprit is inside here. One person entered with us and was sending us out one by one, all while hiding a cruel smile.
“You.”
I stared at one person. At the sa ti, the female student stared at that person too.
“Pardon?”
It was the middle-aged woman. I stared at her intensely and pressed her.
“You were strange.”
“What are you talking about? Don’t go framing an innocent person.”
“Everything just now is only possible if you are the culprit who was targeting us here. Do you think it’s a coincidence?”
“I don’t know anything about that. Don’t corner .”
“So you’re going to play dumb?”
I looked at the female student and then at her backpack. It was probably there.
“Do you happen to have a mirror? Like a hand mirror.”
The middle-aged woman flinched. As if it were obvious, the female student opened her backpack and took out a hand mirror from among several costics.
“Here it is.”
The student’s face was strangely fair, as if she were wearing makeup, which is why I asked. If she’s a girl who wears makeup, she’d naturally carry a mirror.
“If you’re really human, ma'am, you’ll be reflected clearly in the mirror.”
“Pardon?”
“If I’m wrong, I will apologize.”
I didn't give her any room to escape. Because the mirror that would reveal the truth of this elevator was now in my hand.
“……”
The middle-aged woman stared at the mirror in my hand with a panicked expression.
Mirror. There is a common belief that ghosts cannot be reflected in mirrors. If my final hypothesis is correct, you are not human.
Flash!
It was right as I held up the mirror toward the middle-aged woman.
“Ah!”
Thud.
Suddenly the elevator stopped, and all the lights went out. It turned into pitch-black darkness. As the situation turned for the worst, the female student’s scream was heard.
And. I felt an eerie chill on my body.
“……”
It was an ice-cold chill. I felt that it was frost being emitted by sothing like a ghost. As if demanding a price for realizing the truth. It was a coldness that felt like it would freeze my entire body.
And. The lights turned back on.
Now that cold sweat was flowing down my whole body, my senses were slowly returning.
“Huh?”
There was no one inside the elevator where the lights had brightened again. As if there had been nothing from the very start.
Only I was left here alone.
And.
An announcent ca from the ergency bell.
[You have found the correct answer.]
What?
Soon, the elevator stopped.
[0F]
[It is the 0th floor.]
I was still dazed and didn't know what the situation was.
But I saw sothing round rolling on the floor.
I inadvertently grasped it in my hand.
A voice different from before was heard, as if being transmitted into my mind.
『You have acquired *** .』
What?
It was then.
[The doors are opening.]
Whir.
As the elevator doors opened, I felt light pouring in.
In that vast and warm sensation, the fatigue that had weighed down my entire body felt like it was about to lt away.
『The domain of ** is deactivated.』
The mont I thought everything was over.
An eerie and desolate energy grazed past.
It was an instant.
At the sa ti, a spine-chilling voice passed by my ear.
‘Na…… keu…… sya…….’
What is it?
This voice.
Even before I had a mont to think carefully, the vast light visible outside the elevator doors was so dazzling.
Soon.
I saw soone in the distance beckoning to .
And they spoke as if whispering.
“Let’s go out.”
Then they continued.
“Because you shouldn't be here.”
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