Chapter 1

Chapter 1: Waiting Room (1)

In modern society, many people lived their lives struggling to achieve wealth and goals of their own.

Even so, the vast majority could only collide with the limits they had been given and live ordinary lives.

Han Su-myeon, a twenty-seven-year-old young man, was a very timid and ordinary person.

Su-myeon was quite satisfied that he possessed the talent of knowing how to be satisfied with being ordinary.

That was how he evaluated himself, and in any case, he liked that kind of life.

“….”

But today, he opened his eyes amid an eerie air that was anything but ordinary.

When he looked around, he saw a small square room covered in unfamiliar yellowed wallpaper.

“…Kidnapped…?”

Hadn’t he clearly fallen asleep while playing a horror game, his only hobby?

Not only were his surroundings unfamiliar, but perhaps because he had slept lying on the floor, his lower back ached all over.

What had happened to his own cheap but surprisingly comfortable bed, for him to be lying down in such a shabby place?

On top of that, the floor was an old carpet that seemed to have absorbed moisture somewhere, damp and musty, making the whole thing unpleasant.

“Is this a dream….?”

The scenery was exactly like the game he had been playing right before he fell asleep, and he was still in his pajamas.

He did not feel cold, yet the air he breathed in was strangely chilly, sending goosebumps over his skin.

Bewildered by the unreal situation, Su-myeon carefully opened the door and stepped outside.

“What the hell….”

“Where… am I?”

“You don’t know where this is either?”

When he opened the door, he heard a murmur of voices.

The corridor, with not a single window and identical doors stretching in a row, looked like a large, old hotel.

The same wallpaper and carpet as inside the room. And fluorescent lights making a strange noise illuminated the hallway.

The sight was unsettling, because it looked exactly like a scene from the game he had just been playing.

Still, because people were packed everywhere, his confusion was greater than his fear.

“Does anyone know where this is?”

When Su-myeon heard someone shout, he felt his fingertips go cold.

Wasn’t this, too, the exact same line from the very opening of the first chapter of the game he had been playing until just now?

Amid the unreal environment, an unfamiliar phone he could not remember when he had started holding rang.

[Safety Rules of Happy Ellis Hotel]

When Su-myeon checked the rules that appeared over the antique-looking notice, he clutched his forehead.

Evidence too clear to dismiss as mere confusion had appeared before his eyes.

‘Damn it….’

The game I was playing has become reality.

***

CHAPTER. 1

Ellis Hotel

[1. Do not enter a room again once you have left it. The Housekeeper is tidying the guest room :)]

“So none of you know where this is?”

“I… I can’t tell where this corridor ends.”

Before Su-myeon knew it, there were fifteen people gathered in the corridor he had come out into.

When a dozen-odd people murmured in a narrow hallway, their voices echoed and became fairly loud.

People with more proactive personalities stepped forward and tried to gather information, but Su-myeon was the type to stay quietly in the back at times like this.

Usually, when this many people gathered, staying still actually let him hear more.

‘…Oh, including me, there are sixteen?’

As Su-myeon counted heads, he felt relief and unease at the same time.

The game he had played.

Commonly abbreviated as UTG, it was a game popular among horror game enthusiasts.

Its main objective was for the detective protagonist, Kang Han-su, who had been swept up in abnormal phenomena, to investigate ghost stories, save people, and return to reality.

It had been made quite a long time ago, had even spawned various fan games, and had a solid cult following.

The first chapter of the original, Ellis Hotel, began with fifteen people.

‘In particular, Ellis Hotel had that shitty condition where you randomly had a chance of entering while asleep, without any other special requirements….’

The protagonist also ended up here by chance and learned that ghost stories actually existed.

And Su-myeon had somehow been thrown into that as the sixteenth person, someone who had not existed originally.

He was not a character who originally appeared in the game, but a new person abruptly added on his own.

‘For now, that means I haven’t possessed a character guaranteed to die….’

Even as he reflexively analyzed the situation, Su-myeon’s head felt foggy, as if he was not fully awake.

Usually, people who found themselves inside novels were at least extraordinary, but he was just an ordinary guy.

Maybe even calling himself ordinary was self-consolation. He was just a mediocre nobody!

“For now, let’s move together.”

At the voice he heard then, Su-myeon craned his neck and peered around to identify the speaker.

“If we have all been kidnapped to an unknown place, moving together should be safer.”

The protagonist of the game Su-myeon knew. Kang Han-su.

Since it was his first line, Su-myeon wanted to confirm him with his own eyes even amid the confusion.

“I am Detective Kang Han-su of the Seoul Southern Police Station Violent Crimes Unit.”

A tall man with a broad, solid build. A man with a physique even other men would think was impressive, and fierce eyes.

When he showed them his police ID on top of having an appearance that looked like a protagonist no matter who saw him, everyone seemed a little relieved despite their anxiety.

Seeing the protagonist in the flesh for the first time made reality feel even blurrier to Su-myeon.

But soon, he remembered the first incident that would occur and hurriedly looked around.

Among the people who looked as if they were about to move, a shaggy-haired man frantically rummaging through his pockets caught his eye.

“Wait, wait!”

Sure enough, just as he remembered, the shaggy-haired man raised his hand and hurriedly turned out all the pockets on his body.

“I think I left my wallet inside. Please wait a second.”

Which room did I come out of again?

Because all the doors, wallpaper, and carpet were identical, the man hesitated for a moment as he looked at the doors.

During that time, Su-myeon began agonizing for a different reason.

[1. Do not enter a room again once you have left it. The Housekeeper is tidying the guest room :)]

The first safety rule.

As if to demonstrate how serious that rule was, the shaggy-haired man was supposed to become the first victim at this timing.

The moment he found the door he had come out of and stepped one foot inside, the thing inside would eat his head.

“Oh, was it not this one?”

At the shaggy-haired man’s action of yanking open the door in front of him, Su-myeon’s heart sank.

If events followed the game’s sequence, it was the next door.

If he opened the very next door and stepped inside, a maw packed tightly with sharp fangs like a trap would appear.

A tattered rabbit-head mask, its huge mouth gaping wide.

Up to that point, it was only a form that might appear in a cheap horror movie.

That impression changed once the costume head bit down on the man’s head and crunched through his skull until brain matter dripped across the floor….

‘And I’m supposed to witness that in real life right now…?’

Absolutely not!

If he saw that, he was certain he would be plagued by nightmares for the rest of his life.

He liked horror games, but that was only because they were fake and staged.

Because Su-myeon knew far too well what was about to happen, he eventually could not hold back and quietly opened his mouth.

“I don’t think you should open that.”

It was the moment Su-myeon first participated in the game’s development as the new sixteenth guest.

“Pardon? What do you mean?”

At the shaggy-haired man’s response, his hand still resting on the doorknob, Su-myeon cautiously brought it up.

“No… I mean, didn’t everyone have a phone?”

The phone given to every guest. It was essentially a kind of key card.

“Ah, that’s true. It said not to enter a room twice once you’d come out of it….”

“Wouldn’t it actually be better if the Housekeeper were inside? We could ask where this is….”

“But we were all in the hallway. There wasn’t any room the Housekeeper went into.”

People began whispering among themselves on their own.

Su-myeon let out a sigh of relief and stepped back again.

Usually, in novel-like situations, people who had transmigrated into stories rushed forward and desperately tried to save people.

But Su-myeon had no desire to make a spectacle of himself like that.

For someone who had simply been holed up in his room tapping away at a computer until yesterday, leading people was no easy task.

‘Only people who’ve done that before can do that….’

Anyway, wouldn’t Kang Han-su, the game’s protagonist, take care of saving people?

It seemed just right for Su-myeon’s role to be helping Kang Han-su reach the true ending, and helping him save more survivors than in the game.

That had been the role he had played as a player until now.

“Ah, so I’ll just bring it out quickly.”

But while Su-myeon stepped back, the shaggy-haired man, the action-oriented number-one candidate for death, grabbed the doorknob again.

At that sight, Su-myeon threw himself forward without realizing it and snatched the man’s hand.

You crazy bastard, I’m telling you, you’ll die if you open it?!

“Ah, what the hell? Seriously!”

Everyone was already on edge after being dropped into an unfamiliar place.

The shaggy-haired man shouted at Su-myeon, who had suddenly grabbed his hand.

Even the gazes of the people who had scattered all turned back to this place.

Having unintentionally drawn attention to himself and become deeply uncomfortable, Su-myeon wondered what to say, then thought of something.

“Does anyone here have any belongings other than the phone exactly as they remember them?”

He had no intention of pointlessly attracting attention by saying something like, ‘I’ve played this game before!’

All he needed was to take care of people just enough that he would feel less guilty, and then protect his own life.

“Something’s strange about this.”

To make them accept that there was no reason to go back into the room and break the rule, Su-myeon added more.

“I was asleep, and when I opened my eyes, I was here. But when I opened my eyes, I was even wearing my glasses.”

He had clearly taken his glasses off when he went to sleep. Strange, wasn’t it?

As if to show them, Su-myeon pointed to his outfit as well.

A white cotton T-shirt and black sweatpants. No matter who saw him, he looked like he had come out after sleeping normally.

Besides, if he was Korean, there was no way he would have slept with shoes on, yet even his sneakers were properly on his feet.

“The belongings you last remember having might not match what you have now.”

When Su-myeon said that while adjusting his glasses, the shaggy-haired man also seemed to accept it and let go of the doorknob again.

Maybe there was no way something like his wallet would still be there after he had been kidnapped in the first place…?

The shaggy-haired man muttered, then raked wildly through his already messy hair with a confused expression.

“Haah…. Damn it, then what the hell….”

At last, the shaggy-haired man seemed to give up on his wallet and stepped back with a sigh.

Su-myeon let out a small sigh inwardly and felt relieved. This should have saved him.

The shaggy-haired man, whose name Su-myeon had never learned because he died first.

A small expectation also arose in him that he might be able to learn the name he had not known in the game.

“Then, let’s all start moving now.”

When Han-su stepped forward again and led the people, everyone who had been murmuring gathered behind him.

Because the same endlessly distant corridor stretched out on both sides, everyone naturally began following Han-su, who had moved first.

“Then we should also….”

Go.

The moment Su-myeon was about to say that to the shaggy-haired man, an unfamiliar hand suddenly appeared between them.

The instant he registered that the back of that hand was covered in all kinds of tattoos, the hand that had thrust in suddenly yanked the door open.

Before Su-myeon could even be surprised, the man shoved the shaggy-haired man into the room.

“Uh…?”

The door had been pulled open.

Because the door panel blocked Su-myeon as it opened, he could not grab the shaggy-haired man.

The old reddish-brown wooden door filled his vision, and he could only hear the shaggy-haired man’s bewildered voice.

“Hey!”

Flustered, Su-myeon shoved aside the man who had opened the door and looked inside.