Chapter 18: 17

Chapter 17 – Room 102, Cursed Room – ‘Mansion of Fear’ (3)

[User: Han Kain (Wisdom)
Date: Day 6
Current Location: Floor 1, Room 102 (Cursed Room – Mansion of Fear)
Sage’s Advice: 3]

It was raining heavily that morning.

Waking up, I found the butler standing outside as if it was the most natural thing in the world. Hiking would be difficult today because of the rain, but it might be possible to go to the cathedral – I was sharing some idle talk with him as others started to leave their rooms one by one.

Elena didn’t come out for breakfast. Was she in a deep sleep because of how exhausting yesterday was?

We were all cautious of the butler and the maid, and we had gone to sleep after locking our doors so we couldn’t even go into her room.

But she didn’t come out of her room until 10 am, so the butler brought the master key of the mansion to open the door–

And inside was a scene that reminded one of the Sleeping Beauty.

It was a tranquil room. The well-decorated bed looked as if nothing happened, and lying on the bed was a lady who looked like a northern princess.

However, there was an undisguisable odour.

The scent of death.

Even though it was shocking and stunning, it wasn’t as tragic as I thought. It might be because Eunsol-noona briefly mentioned it yesterday.

We just needed one person to survive until the end. Then everyone would be able to survive.

Thus, instead of crying and being sad, the remaining people had to understand what happened, as well as how it could be avoided in the future.

“Hkk, hkk… Uhuk…”

However, not everyone could be as cold-minded as that. Unable to contain herself, Songee began to weep.

Jinchul-hyung was blankly standing still as if he had been struck by a bolt of lightning.

And it wasn’t that easy for me either.

Although I knew we still had a chance, seeing a corpse with my own eyes was enough to shake my heart. While settling my emotions, I walked up to the bed.

Looking at the corpse from nearby didn’t allow me to suddenly understand everything. I wasn’t a police nor a detective, but there were a few things that entered my eyes.

There weren’t any particular wounds around her body except for the thick reddish-black bruise around her neck. It didn’t look like hands, and was most likely a string. Was she strangled with a tough and thin string?

It didn’t seem like she retaliated that much. Even though the mansion had soundproof walls, it wasn’t enough to cover the noise of a deathly struggle. 

More importantly, the room was too clean and there weren’t any traces of retaliation.

There was someone else who discovered something new.

“This… mark. Look at where Elena is lying down and the mark next to her. Looks like she was with someone.”

I looked closely and understood what Eunsol-noona meant.

Elena was lying down on the left side of the bed next to the window rather than the centre of the bed, and it was evident that someone was either sitting or lying down next to her on the right side of the bed.

There was still a faint dent in the mattress, as well as the messy blanket. 

I suddenly had an ominous line of thought.

Did the fluster show on my face?

Unlike the other three who were still crying while not knowing what to do, Eunsol-noona turned to me with a sharp gaze.

“Kain. Let’s not think about something unnecessary. There’s nothing certain, and a ‘logical way of thinking things’ might be meaningless in a place like this.”

“Right… I was just a little flustered.”

‘Locally speaking’,

Someone was able to go into the room of a person who locked the door out of suspicion, spent time together by either sitting or lying down on the same bed, and strangled Elena to death after waiting for her to fall asleep.

Everything was way too obvious that I couldn’t even think of a different scenario. Someone that was trusted by Elena must have—

No.

It might be meaningless to logically analyse things in this place.

My head was turning muddled when the butler showed up and made things even more complex.

“This might be disconcerting, but I think I must convey another concerning news. The weather is so terrible right now that the path through the lake has been blocked.”

After quickly wearing a raincoat, Jinchul-hyung and I headed to the lake. The rain had turned heavier while we were talking about this and that in front of Elena’s corpse.

It was raining so much that it even blinded our sight. 

We both heaved a sigh after arriving at the lake. The water level of the lake was evidently higher. 

The bridge that had been filled with moisture which got us talking about rasputitsa on our first day was now so deep underwater that neither people nor a car could travel over it.

It happened in just one day.

Looking back, it was a peaceful day where all we did was play, have meat and go to sleep, and yet after just one night, one of our group was killed and the path out of the mansion was blocked.

I remembered the words noona said last night at the stream.

‘Doing nothing might look like the safest option but is in fact the most dangerous thing to do.’

Maybe we should have gone straight to work yesterday? After spending one night without doing anything, we were immediately caught in a pinch. 

The mansion began going on a ‘full offensive-mode’ after we returned to the mansion. 

I lifted my head in the middle of washing my face and found myself looking back at me. ‘I’ was grinning but ‘my’ face slowly turned crooked. The eyes became wider as teeth emerged out of the sockets and disgusting bugs crawled around my tongue. 

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I watched that for 30 seconds, before picking up a nearby cup and shattering the mirror in front of me.

After we came to the mansion, this started to happen.

Whenever I looked into the mirror, I would start a staring contest against myself. When it was 12 o’clock on the cuckoo clock, the cuckoo left and poured out a pool of red liquid, and stepping on the stairs created a wailing noise with each step. 

Songee used to scream her guts out whenever that happened, but in just a few hours, even she was able to kick the dolls that rolled their eyes towards her wherever she went.

Should I say, ‘fortunately’?

Thankfully, the strange events happening in the mansion did not directly affect us. The reflection on the mirror would just turn into a horrendous version while the cuckoo clock was just broken.

The stairs were just noisy and the living dolls were simply a little curious about humans.

We soon got rather used to it after realising there was no direct threat to us but…

That didn’t mean we were put in a good mood by it.

After skimming through lunch, we gathered our heads together but couldn’t come up with any good plans.

Now that there were all sorts of mysterious events happening to us, the cause of Elena’s death became even harder to deduce and there was no escape out of the mansion. Time flew by with nothing happening.

6 pm.

Ignoring the burst of red liquid from the cuckoo clock, the butler mentioned the cathedral.

“For now, I believe we should head to the cathedral no matter what.”

“The cathedral all of a sudden? Reason being?” asked Eunsol-noona.

Her words were curt, and I could sense her lack of composure through her voice.

“We should firstly look for ways to leave, should we not. Even though the cathedral has been discarded a long time ago, Sir has been using the wasted building as a storehouse of some sort. Behind the cathedral is connected to the lake, and there is a fairly tough boat there. It was for playing when the lake was tranquil but…”

There is a boat behind the cathedral leading to the lake, which could be used for the escape, was what he was doing.

That sparked two lines of thought in my mind.

Firstly, it sounded plausible, because I had briefly heard how Seungyub was able to survive from Room 101. He had distanced himself from the hazardous location as much as possible and that was how he succeeded at escaping the room.

Then, in that sense, wouldn’t escaping the mansion also count as an escape?

Secondly, I was doubtful.

Why was the ‘butler’ presenting us the way out?

This too had two possibilities. One was that either the cathedral or the boat was just a trap.

And the other possibility… was that the butler had never been our enemy from the beginning. That was definitely possible because looking back, neither the butler nor the maid harmed us in any way.

After racking my brain, I raised my head and found Eunsol-noona staring back at me.

“What do you think, Kain?”

“I believe we should try as many things as possible to leave this place. Anything is going to be better than staying still.”

‘Staying still is the most dangerous thing to do.’

I showed my agreement with noona’s theory through my response and that was what our next plan became.

At night, the rain turned even heavier to the point that it was more correct to call it a storm than a rainfall.

Considering the weather and the limited number of raincoats, we decided that only the four adults – Han Kain, Cha Jinchul, Lee Eunsol and the butler – will be leaving for the cathedral.

Outside was pitch black. It was so dark that it was difficult to see what was a metre ahead of us.

In the end, the butler had to stay at the front with a flashlight as the only one who knew the path and we followed after him by relying on the only source of light.

That was when someone grabbed my clothes.

“Noona?”

“Come back for a bit.”

Was there something she needed to talk about? Just in case, I looked at the status screen but there was no change to the advice section.

“I will go straight to the study after coming back from the cathedral. It doesn’t matter even if they try to stop me. Worse comes to worst, I’ll tell Jinchul to get rid of the butler to go inside. Right now… there are way too many things we don’t know about. No matter how I see it, we need to go to the most suspicious place. At least we need to have an idea of what it is that is trying to kill us.”

“Umm, then I will go with you–”

“No. You pretend like you’re against it. Make a strong objection, and act like you’re too sulky to follow me, because that will make it seem more natural.”

“Noona? What do you mean?”

“I finally have a better idea about this place. We can’t try to have everyone survive. The more we do that, the easier it will be for us to all die without knowing what’s coming. The reason we have no clue about this mansion is because none of us bore the risk until now. Someone needs to sacrifice themselves to find out what’s dangerous. Of course, we can’t have everyone going together because it will be completely over if we all go together and die at the same time. We need to go one by one, and find out what the risks are at the cost of our lives. It’s up to the one or two remaining ones to avoid those elements.”

Her words were stifling.

“You are the one that needs to survive. Can’t you tell? This is not a place where you survive through power. You need to think to survive, and no-one else can think right now.”

I forced words out of my mouth.

“Jinchul-hyung is very insightful.”

“He’s not stupid but he’s emotional. Jinchul has been out of it ever since Elena died. At this rate, he’ll just die somewhere without even being able to retaliate properly.”

It suddenly came to me that this noona was a bit terrifyingly cold. I was no longer confident in going against her proposal.

After 20 minutes of everyone walking in silence, we arrived at the cathedral.

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