CH 89

“I was sure that I saw her sleeping! I really did!” Raehee said.

“That’s true. I was with her at that time.” Seohang came to her defense after some delay. “Raehee only tucked her in and came back out.”

Seogeung scowled. Then, he looked around at the remainder of the people murderously. His eyes stopped at mine. Seogeung yelled, “It was you after all!”

“There was one more chance to push the button after that,” I interjected. Even if I was used to being treated poorly due to my unfortunate upbringing, the way he kept trying to force his suspicions onto me was slowly starting to tick me off. The thing that annoyed me the most was that even though we came to this point, Seogeung was still too willing to suspect others.

I slowly breathed in, then I continued in a collected tone, “It was when everyone decided to take a break. We all came out of our rooms after Hawoo found the corpses in the elevator and screamed, remember? If I remember correctly, everyone was standing in front of their doors.”

Everyone looked at each other and nodded in agreement.

I could clearly remember that moment. Everyone sat around the table in the hall to eat after smelling Woorim’s ramen. After feeling full enough, we each returned to our rooms and got lost in our own thoughts, slept, or drank…

The scream happened during that break.

There was only one who was out in the hallway when everyone else was in their rooms.

It was the one who found the corpses of the staff first.

“Hawoo.” I stared at Hawoo. His face was pale as a sheet. I didn’t need to ask if there was anyone else out in the hallway back then. Everyone who came out of their room was each other’s witness. “Why were you not in your room?”

Hawoo merely bit his lips silently, his entire body quaking. It was an abnormal reaction to a normal question. Everyone looked at Hawoo with bated breaths. “No way,” someone muttered under their breath. The flashlight in Hawoo’s hand shook uncontrollably.

Seogeung asked, looking a bit shaken, “Hawoo, you… Back then, did you come to this room?”

One needed the key to open a room from the outside. However, the stylist who knew the whereabouts of the key passed out, so Raehee probably didn’t think to lock her door. Not only did Raehee frequently visit the room to look after the stylist, but she probably had her guard down because it was daytime.

On top of that, this was before the body parts of the staff were found. Everyone was still tense from the tragedy of Goyeon, but they didn’t suspect each other just yet. Even if I was cast the arrows of doubt, that was all. I was taken off the suspect list because Hyehyun outed me.

It had only been a few hours since Goyeon died. Nobody thought that something would happen in a space shared by so many people.

But alas, something did happen.

After what happened to the stylist, Raehee, who had beaten herself up about it, asked tearfully, “Hawoo, did you push that button? Really? Did you kill her?”

“…” Still no response from Hawoo. Raehee couldn’t bear to face him any longer and stared at the floor.

I asked Raehee, “Back downstairs, you mentioned that Woorim could have been the insider in league with the producer, right? Who brought that up first?”

She must have felt suffocated by the situation, yet she listened to my question earnestly. She looked gloomy as she recalled that memory and hesitated for a moment before she finally said, “….It was Hawoo.”

“No!” Hawoo shouted at the same time. “I said, no!”

He stepped backward. His face, lit up by the lights in other people’s hands, was shining with sweat. Despite the warm light of the bulb, Hawoo’s face was blue with fear. He continued, teeth clattering, “I-I didn’t know that would happen! I had no idea!”

Seogeung questioned him with a crumpled face, “So, you’re saying… You pushed the thing on the wall?”

Hawoo only let out incomprehensible screams in response. It was a more horrible and wretched scream than when he found the bodies of the staff.

“It’s not meeee!” he screamed. He turned his back and ran down the stairs.

Seogeung yelled, “That b*stard!”

Before Seogeung could go after him, Hyehyun and Seohang chased after him first.

“Hawoo!” Seohang called after Hawoo, dashing desperately downstairs. Not long after, I could hear something tumbling down, and Hawoo’s light disappeared.  It seemed like he threw away his flashlight so he could run away better.

“Hawoo, wait! It’s dangerous!” The two men chased after him in vain. Hawoo was already too far away. There was bound to be a big difference in speed between someone running for their lives and his persecutors who were reluctant to chase after someone in the dark.

…Thus, the three pairs of footsteps disappeared into the pit below.

After the three went down, only three remained upstairs.

Seogeung, Raehee, and I were left. Aside from Raehee’s heavy breathing, the hallway fell quiet. Her face was as ashen as that of Hawoo, who was cornered.

“How could this be?” She quivered as she thought back to what happened with Hawoo so far—Hawoo, when she yelled that the stylist disappeared, when they were searching downstairs together, and when he said that Woorim was undoubtedly the insider. She expressed her disbelief countless times.

“…And they say that it’s always the quiet ones,” Seogeung muttered. His breath reeked of alcohol. Then, he sneered and threw insulting remarks about Hawoo. They weren’t very creative or outstanding—he merely switched his target from me to Hawoo.

I stared at Seogeung and knit my brow. “The loudest ones could also be the problem.”

“What?” Seogeung retorted menacingly as he took a step too close to me. “What did you just say? Did you say that to me? Huh?”

I wasn’t sure if it was because of the alcohol or because of the yellow glow of the flashlight, but his face was ruddy. It could be because of his internalized anger and tension. Besides, the more scared and nervous one was, some got louder to pretend they were bigger than they were. Seogeung seemed to be that type of person.

“You know where Seoyoon went, don’t you?” I asked coolly.

It felt surreal how immediately Seogeung shut up. Raehee must have felt that something was off as she looked between the two of us. As the silence dragged on, Seogeung’s grimace grew graver. His bloodshot eyes had an odd glint to them. “What BS are you on this time?”

“What do you mean, Haeseo?” Raehee asked with imploring eyes. She must have gotten a foreboding feeling because her eyes shook nervously. Seoyoon went missing. Why would I ask Seogueng about his whereabouts? She seemed to have a hard time handling the recent and ongoing chain of events.

But unfortunately, these endless issues depleted my time and patience.

How come these things kept happening? Did the mansion transfer its insanity onto us the longer we stayed inside?

“Didn’t Seohang say so? When he heard the scream, the hallway was already dark. But you came out from behind him and said that you heard it from the stairway, that you heard him from downstairs.”

“So what?” Seogeung growled.

Glancing down the hall, the doors that I grew familiar with after seeing them for a day greeted me. Although they were submerged in the darkness now, that didn’t stop me from recalling what they looked like when it was bright upstairs. I pointed to one door and said, “Seohang’s room is the closest to the central hall.”

“What about it?”

“If you yelled from behind him, you were in the hall or beyond.”

After hearing what I had to say, Raehee must have realized my point as she gasped audibly. She threw a frightened look at Seogeung. Either he was more steel-hearted than Hawoo or he was brazen, Seogeung’s face was still red. He was unnaturally frozen in place as the corners of his lips quivered.

Seogeung ground his teeth. “…So?”

“Isn’t your room quite far from the hall?”

The cast members’ rooms were on the west side of the central hall, and the staff rooms were on the east. In the middle space, the hall and kitchen were free for everyone to use. Seohang’s room was closest to the hall, closer to the center. Seogeung’s room was more westward.

“Why were you there? Didn’t you tell the others that you were sleeping off your drunkenness?”

After listening to Seogeung, Seohang hurriedly ran downstairs. He was probably so out of his mind that he didn’t notice anything off. Nobody doubted Seogeung when he said he was drunk because he had been drinking beer throughout.

Seoyoon’s disappearance and the turned-off hallway lights—amidst the series of incidents, there was no time to seriously consider the placement of Seogeung’s room.