CH 45

Raehee asked in a small voice, “But wh-why? Why did they run away?”

“If I knew that, why would I be here? I would open up a fortune-telling shop in the middle of the city then.” Seogeung showed his irritation openly. He even chatted about various things with the producer last night, so he must have felt more betrayed than the other cast members.

Seogeong was the only person who was replying to people and he was in such an irritable mood. Perhaps it was obvious that nobody dared to ask anything more. The truth was that, amongst them, nobody could answer any question properly. The hall was filled with silence again. Everyone was careful not to say anything rashly, fearful that their words would somehow become a reality.

Given the situation, it didn’t seem like there would be any more progress. In the meantime, it would be better to deal with the things that one could do right now.

“…Is there anyone willing to lend me their flashlight?” I asked, and everyone looked at me. I showed them my broken flashlight and continued, “As you can see, my flashlight is useless because it’s in this state.”

“Why do you need a flashlight?” Hyehyun asked me almost as sharply as Seogeung’s tone moments ago.

I sighed and pointed downstairs. “Goyeon. We can’t leave her like that.”

At the sound of the name from my mouth, Goyeon’s stylist covered her face with her hands again and wept. People couldn’t be judged by their appearances, but because of her bob-cut and clean and plain face, she looked quite young. Perhaps that was why it seemed like she had no immunity to the death of a close person.

Most likely feeling sorry for the stylist who seemed on the verge of collapse, Raehee walked over and patted the other’s back. She still didn’t look like she would calm down, so Raehee held her and pulled her aside to the kitchen while glancing at the rest of us. Her glance told us that she would calm her down after handing her something to drink and that she would leave the rest to us.

The sound of her pitiful cries grew further away and Seoyoon pushed back his head and mumbled, “That’s true. We can’t leave her like that…”

As he said that, he gave me a sidelong glance. “I’m asking to make sure, but did you go down after hearing her scream?”

I had nothing to lie about so I replied concisely, “In the morning, Goyeon asked me to go downstairs with her. After that, I was in one room while Goyeon left to go downstairs.”

“You let her walk off alone?”

“My battery fell out, so I was looking for it.” As if to confirm, I showed them my empty flashlight. Seoyoon, who interrogated me like a detective on a case, didn’t seem to want to think any further because he just said, “I understand.”

He probably tried to question me to understand the situation better, given that I was the first person to discover her corpse. Perhaps it was a symptom of a workaholic. He always had to mediate the crowds and make a judgment call to lead the conversation in an appropriate direction—it was a very show-host-like habit.

“But don’t touch too much. Even if it’s an accident… the police need to investigate.”

“I’ll just cover her with a clean cloth and mark the door so that nobody enters,” I said.

Seoyoon seemed satisfied by my answer because he nodded. He handed me his light. He didn’t seem to want to go back downstairs after seeing that.

True, someone just died.

People feel creeped out just by hearing that someone died in the same building they were in. To add to that, the body of that person was also somewhere downstairs, right under our feet. It was understandable that one would want to avoid the situation. No person in their right mind would want to keep seeing a scene like that.

However, before Seoyoon’s flashlight reached my hands, someone snatched it away.

“It’s all right. I’ll go downstairs with him since it’ll be dangerous to go alone.” It was Woorim. He had come next to me at some point and returned the device to Seoyoon. The only two people who seemed to have some composure in this situation seemed to be me and him. “They handed out one light per person. I think it’ll be better to keep your own, just in case.”

That made sense. Seoyoon must have thought the same since he received his light with a rigid face. The fact that those responsible for this shoot disappeared from the set meant that those who knew the place best had also disappeared.