CH 119

What made me tenser was that I wasn’t feeling the chills because of the monster that was hugging me.

The chill was from a deeper place—somewhere deep inside of my body.

Just like this dark mansion, it was an abyss that had never received a shred of light.

I felt it from the human named Haeseo Nam, who stood at the junction of my physical body and my soul.

It felt like a coiled, cold snake lurking in my heart and stomach.

“They weren’t your mother and grandmother. You have nobody to call your own,” Seohang said.

The spark of self-doubt.

“What… Do you mean?” I asked.

He whispered in a low voice like he was telling me a secret, “Have you ever felt that you were particularly lucky in this mansion?”

Luck—Seogeung had yelled at me, “Lucky b*stard.”

No, there was no way that was true. I didn’t have good luck. Perhaps I used up all my luck in coming back to life—I never even won five dollars in the lottery. Moreover, there was a black-eyed goblin around me. I had nobody to call my friend, and everyone who I ever cared for died. How could I ever be considered lucky?

Other things cropped up in my memory.

When I tripped before discovering Goyeon’s body, I thought I was lucky that I fell hard in front of the room—otherwise, I would have fallen into the hole like Goyeon. There were a lot of glass shards on the floor, but I wasn’t hurt anywhere. Yeah, I was fortunate.

Then, other memories started to surface, and the chilling feeling in my heart spread like ink on wet paper.

When I was isolated in the room with Woorim, there were so many objects that fell above our heads, yet I was lucky enough to make it to Woorim’s side of the room. It wouldn’t have been strange to be crushed to death by those objects. When I was locked up in my room, I happened to push the wall to find a hidden door leading to the room next door.

That wasn’t all.

Raehee Park—she was the only one to be devoured by the hands that chased us at a breakneck pace. I was completely unscathed. There was another similar situation afterward. After I killed Woorim, I went out to the hallway to kill myself, but I was yet again unharmed. Hyehyun, on the other hand… Hyehyun was found dead in the hallway.

Oh.

I grabbed my head with both hands. Hyehyun Ham—I tried to pull out the knife from his back to kill myself, but that didn’t work because I couldn’t pull it out. Then, I met Seohang… My headache grew worse.

Was I lucky? Was I lucky in this mansion?

I wanted to deny it, but “he” had already read my expression. He smiled and met my eyes. It was Seohang’s face, but he smiled in a way that I never saw Seohang smile. I knew that smile—Yeonseon.

“Of course you were lucky. All your luck that you collected is here. This mansion can’t kill you,” he told me.

“…”

“Wasn’t this place familiar? Here and there. Even if it was renovated, I didn’t touch anything other than the interior design.”

I had no choice but to peer at him with my violently shaking vision. This mansion was nearly identical to the one that I saw when I was younger—where I met the Child.

The Child, the Child, the Child. The Child’s dream was to become a singer. His mother wanted him to become one. But he couldn’t sing, so he said that he was too bad to become a singer. Whose memories were those? Whose dream was it to become a singer? It wasn’t my aspiration.

Right, Yeonseon. Yeonseon told me that he wanted to become a singer. He wanted to make his parent’s long-time wish come true. Yeonseon said that. Who was Yeonseon back then? It wasn’t Yeonseon Ham. I had never met the real Yeonseon Ham before. The Yeonseon who I met…

He was the one before my eyes—the Child wearing the face of Seohang.

The Child.

The Child asked, “Who are you?”

“Who are you?” The question that I asked in the past was brought to my lips. “Who are you? Why are you on Yeonseon?”

That voice and the Child’s overlapped. “My loved one, I want to know your name.”

“I” stuttered, “I’m… Haeseo Nam.”

He shook his head. “No, Haeseo Nam is my name.”

I stared back at the Child with a tense face. The Child asked again, “The one who died in this mansion, became an evil spirit, and took the luck of those who stood at death’s doorstep in exchange for saving their lives—the reason why some people say that they used up all their life’s worth of luck in coming back to life.”

“…”

“Really, what is your name?”

“I” couldn’t tell him anything at all.