Baek Saheon opened his eyes.
To be precise, it would be more accurate to say he hadn't slept a wink.
'Damn it.'
Ever since entering 'Horizon Lodge,' he had been on edge, trying to find a way to survive and get out with all his limbs intact.
Half of that effort had likely gone into reading Kim Soleum’s moods and trying to stay on his good side.
'That bastard.'
He felt no sense of shame. It was something he did to survive.
…His current dilemma about whether to go to Kim Soleum’s room was in a similar vein.
'I need to gather whatever information I can.'
That madman definitely knew something. He thought he had to shake him down and prepare a trump card for survival.
But….
“…….”
Was Kim Soleum really a madman?
To be exact, why had he… saved him?
In truth, he knew. Kim Soleum could have killed him or used him as a Sacrificial Lamb several times at the exhibition, yet he hadn’t.
He had messed with him a few times, but in the end….
'No!'
He probably did it because it was fun. He probably thought it would be more unpredictable and entertaining if he were alive!
Baek Saheon reached a conclusion quickly. He had never met such a nutcase in his life….
'…Still, I don't think he would lie about information.'
With a strange sense of trust, he opened his room door—
Something was in front of the door.
“…!!”
The lodge, where the sun had already set, was submerged in Darkness, so he only discerned the silhouette right in front of him a moment too late.
A man about his height.
…It was Kim Soleum.
'Fuck!'
He was terrified, but honestly, he felt a slight sense of relief too.
Wasn't it better than a stranger?
At the very least, he wouldn't try to kill him.
“Hey….”
Just then, his eyes, having adjusted to the Darkness, made it out.
In the hands of Kim Soleum, who had calm eyes, was an axe.
“…….”
'What?'
An axe?
For a moment, he almost rubbed his one remaining eye, but he soon came up with a plausible guess.
“Is that something you grabbed to prepare for the murderer….”
Suddenly, another suspicion flashed through Baek Saheon’s mind.
The texts Kim Soleum had kept sending.
[Watch out for the serial killer]
Could that have been….
A warning?
“Goodbye.”
The axe fell toward his head.
And the next morning.
While leaving their room to the sound of heavy rain, a couple realized that a somewhat familiar melody was mixed with the sound of the downpour.
Mmm, mmm-mmm, mmm-mmm, mmm-mmm-mmm.
Humming.
“Isn’t this the song that played when my car’s navigation broke?”
“Oh, I think you’re right… Do they play it on the radio around here?”
While they were breathing in the modest dawn air that still remained, they walked down the hallway and into the kitchen, clutching their Cassette Tapes like treasures….
“Aaaaaack!!”
They saw something shoved into the kitchen furnace.
As if fireworks and toys had been set off inside, the furnace—charred all around—was filled to an eerie capacity.
Charred black coals.
And from that dark red mass of charcoal, two branches like bent sticks protruded, sticking out on both sides.
What hung at the ends were….
Sneakers.
The half-burnt feet of a human.
“Aaaaaack!!”
“Oh my god! Is that a person!?”
“Good heavens, good heavens, what on earth happened, oh my!!”
The outbursts of horror and screams echoed through the lodge, and the people who heard the noise came downstairs one by one.
Then they joined in the screaming.
“What’s going on… Gaaaaah!!”
“Ugh!!”
From the college students to the middle-aged Assistant Manager driver, everyone fell into a panic.
One person even sank to the floor, his face deathly pale.
It was the young man who had identified himself as an office worker and had been using Written Conversation because his throat hurt.
But… surely, there were two office workers, weren't there?
'No way!'
The couple pointed at the feet in the furnace.
“That young man who came with you… could it be him? Huh? The eye patch! The one wearing the eye patch….”
The office worker youth seemed to peer at the burnt sneakers, then covered his mouth and barely nodded his head.
“Ack!!”
Someone was dead.
The person they had been talking to just yesterday!
The moment they realized this, shouts and lamentations broke out everywhere again.
“Call 119 right now!”
“What the fuuuck is this!!”
“This is why you shouldn't use the kitchens in old houses recklessly! If you’re not careful, a fire breaks out and an accident like that happens!”
But perhaps a small whisper was heard in their hearts.
'Was it really an accident?'
Could a person be completely incinerated like that without the fire spreading anywhere else…?
In such a gruesome state?
'Could it be….'
Still in a panic, people rushed to the phones.
And a moment later.
A chill ran down their spines.
“The, the phone isn't working. It won't even ring!”
“Caretaker! Where did the Caretaker go! A person is dead here!”
However, the Caretaker, who had promised to serve them well, was nowhere to be seen, as if by magic.
Deep in the dark mountains where heavy rain was pouring down.
Inside the lodge, there was only them and the humming….
“…….”
“…….”
Mmm, mmm-mmm, mmm-mmm, mmm-mmm-mmm.
An appalling amount of rain was pouring outside the window, and a landslide had even occurred during the night, covering the bus stop with earth and sand.
“The road… it’s completely buried.”
“My car!!”
That was how people came to realize.
Mmm, mmm-mmm, mmm-mmm, mmm-mmm-mmm.
That something was wrong.
“Th-this… this was playing over there.”
“…….”
Next to the corpse stuck in the furnace, humming was coming from a small, old analog cassette player.
Mmm, mmm-mmm, mmm-mmm, mmm….
Click.
One of the college students, who had turned off the cassette player, took out what was inside.
A worn, ivory-colored tape.
“…!”
The deathly pale office worker took out his notebook and scribbled with a trembling hand.
[It looks like the Cassette Tape Staff member Baek had...]
“O-oh my god.”
The nightmare began then.
Lunchtime.
There was fairly neat soup and rice, perhaps prepared in advance by the Caretaker, but people didn't touch it as if they had made a pact.
Instead, they ate things like energy bars or snacks they had brought with them, roaming every corner of the lodge in search of a place where their Smartphones would get a signal.
Of course, there were no results.
Amidst the downpour, the gloomy lodge was isolated without any link to the outside world, feeling depressed and sinister….
'This is driving me crazy, seriously!'
One of the college students, who was clicking on a social media app that wouldn't open, sat in the living room and irritably turned off his Smartphone screen.
“Fuck!”
“Damn, this guy is totally shitting himself.”
Beside him, his friends from the same hiking club giggled in horror, pushing each other toward the corpse in the furnace that only had its legs remaining.
They were acting as if it were a joke, even secretly taking a few photos, but they must have lost their appetites, as they didn't even unwrap the calorie bars or chocolates they had brought.
Even so, they were somewhat more relaxed than the other terrified visitors.
They relied on their numbers.
'There are three of us, so whatever.'
Even if there was some bastard trying to kill people. He wouldn't be stupid enough to target the group with the most people first.
'He’d probably kill the people who came alone, or the person left alone first.'
In that sense, his anxiety subsided a bit.
“Hey….”
It was just as the college student was about to start chatting with his friend.
Slide. A chocolate bar with peanuts was thrust in front of his eyes.
Turning his head, he saw the office worker holding up his notebook with a pale complexion.
[Would you like some? I don't think I can eat...]
“Huh? No.”
As he replied bluntly, a friend beside him chuckled.
“This guy can't eat peanuts.”
[Ah… I’m sorry]
The office worker sat down quietly on the sofa again, looking dejected.
Was his rank Assistant Manager? At first, he seemed to have a fairly tough impression, but after seeing his colleague die, he looked completely feeble.
'He’s scared.'
One could say he had developed the look of someone whose spirit would break with just a few hits.
“Hey, a smoke?”
“Yeah. I’m dying, damn it.”
In the meantime, the two friends disappeared for a moment to smoke.
The office worker also picked up his Smartphone that had no signal, glanced at the furnace with a dark expression, and then went up to the second floor.
Silence fell like that.
“…….”
He had inadvertently been left alone.
It felt chilling for some reason.
'In movies, people always get attacked at times like this.'
The college student shook his leg, then glanced around with a wary expression.
He felt a bit more comfortable realizing he had a jackknife in his pocket, but it was only momentary.
'Why the fuck did they go by themselves?'
In the end, he set out to find his friends in the backyard himself.
Clutching his jackknife tightly, his pace naturally quickened because the back of his neck felt chilly.
Then he opened the back door of the kitchen leading to the rainy backyard.
Click.
It smelled of damp water.
'They’re probably under the roof somewhere.'
They wouldn't stand in the rain just to smoke. So the college student planned to follow the roofline and find his friends in a place similar to an attached warehouse.
However, the further he walked, the stranger he felt.
Something fishy poked at his nose.
'Iron?'
It was the kind of smell that would come from rusty iron.
Since there were many old things in the warehouse, he figured it might be the smell of rust from a leak.
The student made that assumption as he turned the corner.
“Hey, Park Kyung-soo….”
Then, a strong smell of iron that practically paralyzed his nose hit him.
“W-wha…?”
Inside the backyard warehouse was an old civil engineering grinding machine.
And it seemed that machine worked properly even if you put something other than wood into it.
Splatter.
Ground meat was pouring out of the machine's discharge port, which should have been spitting out sawdust.
Tattered clothes, blood, meat, and bone were all ground up and splattered messily all over the floor.
“…….”
What is this?
What is…… this?
For an instant.
His brain, unable to comprehend the situation, refused to process it, and then understood a beat late.
He had indeed found his companions.
Turned into ground meat.
“Uuwwerrrrgh……!”
As his panicked brain began to pour out vomit and screams,
Another sound mixed in.
Through an old audio system.
Mmm, mmm-mmm, mmm-mmm, mmm-mmm-mmm.
The sound of a Cassette Tape.
“Heeek!”
The college student turned around and ran like a madman back into the lodge.
Goosebumps and terror chased him to the crown of his head.
“Hey student, why are you running….”
“Aaaaaack!!”
The student had a fit and slapped away the hand that grabbed his shoulder.
“Don't fucking come near me!”
“Wh-what?!”
He looked up.
He saw the puzzled faces of the people staying in this lodge.
And their commonality!
'The tapes!!'
Right!
If the killer who did this crazy thing did it because they were after the tapes?!
The student immediately rummaged through his pocket and held up his tape.
“Look at this! This!”
His eyes rolled back and spit flew.
“I’m throwing this away! Take it if you want! I-I’m definitely giving up, damn it?! I’ve given up!!”
Clang!
Throwing the tape on the floor, the student ran madly again, entered a room on the second floor, and closed the door.
Only after locking the door could he breathe.
“Huuuuh…….”
Anxiety made his eyes roll.
Mushed flesh and fragmented bones flickered and thudded in his mind.
Thump.
Thump.
Should he pile up a barricade with furniture in front of the door?
Thump.
No, that would be blocking his escape route.
Thump.
The student looked at the vintage mother-of-pearl wardrobe and hesitated, then just pressed himself against the wall next to the wardrobe and held his jackknife.
Then he stared fixedly at the room door.
Thump….
His breath returned as he leaned his back against the wall.
'Just try to force it open…!'
Then he would fucking scream at the top of his lungs and swing his knife. What could they do if people came flocking!
He just had to stay alert.
“You’ll never do it, you’ll never do it….”
Next to the student who was muttering like a madman….
Click.
Gently,
The wardrobe opened.
And the next morning, through the wide-open door, the student would greet the others.
As a corpse swollen like a sausage with lumps all over his body.
Death by allergic shock.
Just like that, the entire hiking club had vanished.
“Aaaaaack!!”
When one healthy office worker and three college students were found as corpses in just one day, people went completely insane with fear.
“The inheritance! Someone among us is killing the others to get more inheritance, yeah, I’m sure of it! They’re going to kill us all and silence us so they can have the tapes all to themselves!”
“Darling, the Caretaker is suspicious, I told you that bastard seemed like a psycho?! This place….”
“It’s a ghost! We’re all possessed by a ghost!! Hahaha!!”
The middle-aged man shouted as if he had lost his mind, then pushed past people and ran outside.
“Ack!”
Rumble.
A clap of thunder was heard right on cue.
No, it seemed another sound could be heard overlapping with the thunder.
Crash!
“…!”
“Wh-what!”
Startled by the roar, people looked out the window.
The civil servant muttered gloomily.
“…A landslide.”
It had surged in again, 'right on time.'
Swept away by the pouring earth and sand, the middle-aged man who had run out like a madman vanished as if swallowed by the mountain below.
Aaaaaack….
His scream faded away into the soil below the mountain.
It was a certain death by crushing.
Rumble… Crash!
Instead of humming, the sound of thunder filled the outside of the lodge, and lightning flashed.
“…….”
“…….”
A suffocating silence flowed between the frozen people….
Remaining people: four.
The second night.
The couple, who had searched every inch of the lodge for a way to contact the outside world, were returning to their room, panting.
There was no harvest, but they had realized something else.
“Heeek, heek…….”
“Shut the fuck up and breathe quietly, you bitch!”
“Ack!”
The husband, who had violently shoved his companion whom he had introduced as his wife, ran out of the living room with trembling eyes and dashed up to the second-floor hallway alone.
Coincidentally, a person cautiously leaving their room was startled upon meeting the husband's bloodshot eyes.
“You there!!”
It was the office worker who had been using Written Conversation because his throat hurt.
He was startled and pulled a notebook from his chest to write something, but the man shaking what he was holding came first.
“This, this gold frame…!”
He had taken down a gold frame that was hanging in the living room.
His eyes rolled as he pointed at the contents inside.
The rabbit is roasted in the kitchen
The deer is caught in the backyard
The pigeon is fattened in the room
The sheep is sliced in the living room
“People are dying exactly like this!”
“…!”
The person roasted in the kitchen, the person ground in the backyard, the person swollen in the room!
“Whether it's the lodge keeper or whoever, anyway, they're playing games with us! This, this might be being broadcasted! No! Anyway, it's certain they're playing with us!”
The office worker's eyes widened in shock.
The man, whose conviction grew at that reaction, screamed.
“This time it's the living room! Someone will be sliced to death in the living room! I'm sure of it! Before that, we have to find a way out….”
“Oh.”
…….
Huh?
Did he just… speak….
“You're surprisingly quick on the uptake, Brown.”
“Brown?”
Those were the man's final words that day.
“Are you awake?”
The man, who regained consciousness along with a headache, lifted his head.
“Mmph! Mmmph!”
He couldn't speak, as if he were gagged.
Still, the man screamed with all his might.
“Mmmmmmph!!”
The fact that this place was a basement smelling of musty mold, or that it was so dark he could barely see an inch in front of him, were not the main reasons for his screams.
It was because there was another head right next to his!!
Specifically,
just the head!
“Mmph mmph!”
The pale face of a dead person, placed on a tray, was right next to his nose.
He felt like he was going crazy.
Tears, snot, and cold sweat streamed down, making the man's face a mess as he screamed for help.
But the gag swallowed everything.
“Hmmmph, hmph, mmmph!”
“Are you scared? Please bear with it. I'm bearing with it too.”
A calm and composed voice responded.
The man rolled his eyes, trying to move away from the head, and looked up.
And he realized.
‘That office worker…!’
A young man in a black tracksuit was looking down at him with a frown.
He looked at the blood-stained cotton gloves in his hand with contempt, then sighed and put them back on.
And he picked up the axe.
“Hmmmmmmph!!”
“Why is it that even when we know intellectually that people never change, we still start by screaming? It's just tiring for both of us.”
“Mmph!! Mmmph!!”
“Let's not waste energy for nothing.”
He's a lunatic.
This bastard, this bastard was the killer…!!
The man wanted to do anything—negotiate, plead, even counterattack—but his tightly bound body and blocked mouth wouldn't allow it.
Tears streamed from his eyes.
“Ah, does physical and mental pain get slightly reduced…? Well, I think it might have been like that.”
The office worker checked the blade in a dry voice.
The axe blade slid against the rough surface of the glove.
“It's quite rational, but I still don't really like it.”
It was used for its original purpose.
A flashing swing that cut through the air.
Thud.
Clang…….
“…….”
“…….”
In the now quiet workshop, Kim Soleum lowered the axe.
And he spoke in a slightly brighter voice.
“Almost there.”
Remaining people: three.
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