Chapter 15

Chapter 15: Pool (2)

[15. You must absolutely obey the attendant’s words. Keep this in mind. Obedience.]

They had to go in the opposite direction of the arrow?

Su-myeon briefly persuaded the puzzled group.

“I saw a permanent marker among the supplies Ki San-hyeok’s group had earlier.”

And sure enough, the arrow had a crude shape, as though someone had drawn it with a marker.

At Su-myeon’s words, Ju-hee reflexively had a common-sense question.

“Why on earth….”

Why would someone deliberately lead people down the wrong path with a lie?

But before she could finish the question, she found the answer herself and stopped talking.

Ki San-hyeok was an insane psychopath.

There was no way someone like him would have any proper reason.

Other people getting fucked over was simply something he found entertaining.

“That bastard did seem capable of doing that.”

Su-myeon and Ju-hee had seen San-hyeok’s behavior one more time at the Shopping Center.

They had not encountered him directly and had only seen him while hiding, but even the scene they had witnessed then was enough to define San-hyeok as a psycho.

“Then should we go the opposite way?”

“Yes. Let’s go toward the side without the arrow.”

Then they would inevitably have to face the lifeguard one more time.

However, everyone agreed that they had no other choice.

[Please do not crawl]

After all that tension, the lifeguard they encountered added a new notice.

Fortunately, this condition was also easy to follow.

“I mean, does it look like we’re going to crawl around here?”

Du-pal muttered in a bewildered voice as he watched the lifeguard disappear into the distance.

Everyone had been startled by its grotesque appearance, but they seemed to be slowly getting used to the sight of it disappearing harmlessly.

However, Su-myeon quietly watched the lifeguard’s back as it disappeared and furrowed his brow.

“Is something strange?”

Instead of answering Han-su, Su-myeon placed a finger to his lips as if telling him to be quiet.

For an instant, everyone went silent, even holding their breath.

Then everyone was able to hear a strange sound.

“Hnngh…. Hnngh….”

It sounded like a man sobbing….

As the group thought that, they met one another’s eyes.

“Wait, isn’t this the sound of a person?”

“Could this also be a sound those monsters are making to trick us?”

Had they not already heard children’s laughter to the point of exhaustion on the floor below?

However, as far as Su-myeon knew, there was no monster in this pool that made the voice of an adult man.

Even the lifeguard communicated in writing, so who would make a sound….

“Don’t tell me.”

“Is Ki San-hyeok’s group still on the same floor right now?”

Han-su voiced the question, seeming to have had the same thought as Su-myeon.

That group was entirely made up of adult men, so that was the most likely possibility.

If they were merely on the same floor, then Su-myeon’s group, which even had a gun, had greater fighting strength.

However, the problem had grown a little complicated.

“Then that side must have been receiving warnings too.”

Everyone understood what Su-myeon meant and fell into silence once more.

The Flamingo Lifeguard’s warnings.

Among the warnings that increased one by one every time they encountered it, they had no way of knowing what warnings that side had received.

Likewise, that also meant the other side did not know the warnings Su-myeon’s group had received here.

The warning not to crawl was hard to violate.

“Don’t tell me… someone on that side ate something or ran…?”

That was an easy condition to violate if one had not seen it directly.

At Ha-min’s words, Su-myeon furrowed his brow.

“Damn it.”

The one fortunate thing was that in the lifeguard’s case, it only retaliated against those who ignored its words.

So even if that side broke a warning, it had nothing to do with Su-myeon’s side.

However, if they dirtied the pool water because of it, the hotel would try to “manage” the water quality again.

“Let’s move quickly.”

Su-myeon moved again with the exhausted group.

The obvious arrows increased in number little by little.

The funny thing was that even though they were going in the opposite direction of those arrows, the arrows kept appearing.

“Th-that son of a bitch… It looks like he found the right path, then drew these while coming back the opposite way, doesn’t it?”

So even if they came right in front of the stairs, if they saw those arrows, they would leave the stairs behind and go somewhere else.

At Ju-hee’s voice, which was mixed with anger, Su-myeon did not agree aloud, but he clenched his teeth.

He truly was an irredeemable son of a bitch.

“Ugh… ngh….”

Just then, a clearer groan reached them.

A sound of someone moaning in pain.

It was coming from the direction the group was moving.

When they cautiously turned a bent corner, they saw a person covered in blood.

“H-hah… ngh, help… help me…. Please help me.”

He seemed to have discovered Su-myeon’s group as well and muttered desperately.

When he stretched out his arm and tried to crawl toward them, Su-myeon urgently shouted,

“Stay right there! Don’t move! If you move, you’ll die!”

It was firm, but its meaning was conveyed clearly.

Since they could not run, they slowly approached him and were able to check his condition.

The man seemed to have been beaten badly even in the face, so he was not easy to recognize right away, but Su-myeon soon noticed.

It was Young-cheol, who had followed San-hyeok.

In the meantime, Su-myeon saw the large amount of blood that had fallen and pooled on the floor. After hesitating briefly, he tapped Han-su.

“Please take off your jacket.”

“Yes.”

With Han-su’s jacket, Su-myeon wiped the blood around them.

Dirtying the tiles was one thing, but it would be troublesome if blood flowed into the water.

While he wiped up just enough to keep it from flowing, Ju-hee asked Young-cheol what had happened.

“I shouldn’t have followed Ki San-hyeok… that bastard.”

His mouth seemed to be swollen, and he muttered with slurred pronunciation.

Anyone could see that he had not been attacked by an unpleasant monster, but had been severely beaten by people.

“That bastard is using people and inciting them.”

“I mean, maybe that bastard’s some conglomerate heir outside. But in here, we all need to survive together!”

Ju-hee responded as though she could not understand the people who had been incited, but Young-cheol let out a sigh.

“Everyone is trying to get out of here anyway, aren’t they? He said that if they listened to him, he would give each person one billion won once they got out.”

“They believed that?”

“What if they didn’t?”

They had already been separated from Su-myeon’s group because of a moment’s judgment.

It would not have been easy to resist San-hyeok, who had first won over those blinded by money.

“On top of that, as long as they looked good to that bastard, they could survive by using someone else as bait too, so everyone thought it wasn’t a loss for them.”

Su-myeon, who had prevented the pool water from being contaminated first, let out a hollow laugh.

In the end, it was a very simple form of incitement.

He made people tempted with money, then used this situation afterward.

If they did not listen to him, they would be the first bait abandoned in a crisis.

“I should have listened to you from the beginning.”

At Young-cheol’s words, Su-myeon sighed.

Exactly. Why couldn’t they just listen from the beginning? Why stray down another path and suffer like this?

But on the other hand, he could understand it to some extent.

It probably had not been easy to trust him right away when, at a glance, he looked like a jobless bum far removed from anything trustworthy.

If anything, the current group, who trusted and relied on him, felt almost innocent.

“My name is Kim Young-cheol. In the end, I opposed that bastard and got abandoned like this.”

With Young-cheol joining them, the group regained some vitality once again.

At any rate, the fact that choosing Su-myeon and staying with him had been the comparatively correct choice.

In this situation, knowing that they were walking the best path was, laughably enough, a small comfort.

“I performed some emergency treatment to a certain extent, but I haven’t eaten anything since yesterday….”

Young-cheol picked up his bloodstained Heartphone and tried several times to stand, but failed.

His claim that he had performed emergency treatment was not just empty talk.

Young-cheol did not seem inclined to reveal it, but Su-myeon knew.

His occupation was surgeon.

“By any chance, I’m truly sorry, but… could I have even a little water….”

“We can give you food, but it’s difficult here. That long-necked monster told us not to eat or drink anything.”

Ju-hee spoke regretfully, and Han-su bent down.

“For now, would you like to get on my back? It would be best for you to stop moving.”

They had already wasted enough time here.

Young-cheol agreed with Han-su’s words and, after thanking him several times, climbed onto his back.

They spent quite a bit of energy making sure no drops of blood splattered, but they somehow managed to get him stably onto Han-su’s back.

“That bastard wrote those arrows in reverse. If you follow them…. Ah, you were already coming the opposite way. Right.”

Young-cheol tried to give them information in his own way, but when he recalled the path they had been taking, he looked at Su-myeon again.

The unfamiliar space where he had first opened his eyes.

The moments when an unknown monster chased them and they ran.

In those bewildering moments, that man had given the correct answer without even a little hesitation or confusion.

And yet he did not try to stand out, instead silently leading the group equally.

That isn’t easy….

Leading a group while not showing off was truly difficult.

After leaving the conspicuous actions to the others, he quietly cleaned up the surroundings.

He wiped up the splattering blood and checked their surroundings.

All of those actions were movements carried out precisely because they were necessary.

“By any chance, what did Mr. Su-myeon originally do?”

Young-cheol quietly asked Han-su.

Han-su had already revealed that he was a detective.

However, at Young-cheol’s question, Han-su gave a short response.

“I do not know.”

Had they still not even talked about something like that after two days had passed since falling into this unfamiliar place?

Young-cheol was in the position of having joined midway, so he could not ask further and nodded.

Perhaps Su-myeon had not been someone who did ordinary work.

Some kind of special agent, or something like the National Intelligence Service….

“It’s the stairs!”

Han-su was carrying Young-cheol on his back, and Su-myeon was following behind while taking care so the blood did not flow the wrong way.

During that gap, Ha-min, who had gone to the front saying he would do something too, shouted.

“Those are the stairs going up, right?”

The group, who could not know what Young-cheol was thinking, rejoiced at the welcome news they had finally heard.

Su-myeon was also extremely busy looking at the floor and wiping away the flowing blood.

“Everyone, be careful until the very end, and let’s hurry up.”

The floor above was not an easy place either, but at least it was not somewhere they had to be this tense.

At Su-myeon’s words, everyone carefully moved their feet.

Not running was a more difficult condition than they had expected.

“There’s… a door?”

If all the spaces until now had been open, this time was a little different.

When they climbed the stairs, a large, antique door blocked their way.

[Wine Bar]

A signboard was blatantly hanging in front of it.

“Could there be no minors allowed…?”

When Ha-min spoke timidly, as if feeling ominous, Ju-hee checked the Heartphone.

“No phrase like that appeared. Should we go in for now?”

“Normally, entry itself is not illegal. Only in cases where one consumes alcohol….”

Because their protagonist seemed ready to recite the current law, Su-myeon pushed him from behind.

“Let’s go in first. Let’s get out of this damn pool already.”

At Su-myeon’s touch, Han-su let himself be pushed easily.

The moment the group all entered after opening the door, the door slammed shut.

When everyone reflexively turned to look at the door, Ju-hee, who had entered last, muttered,

“…I didn’t close it.”

Then who had closed it?

Suppressing their ominous feelings, the group examined their surroundings.

Unexpectedly, what surrounded them was a better scene than they had thought.

Atmospheric jazz music could be heard, and the lighting was slightly dim, with antique velvet chairs.

Compared to the pool, which had been alien enough with its brightness and whiteness, it looked comfortable and peaceful.

“…….”

But no one could lower their guard.

As they carefully examined the surroundings and slowly stepped inside, they saw a long bar counter.

And beyond it, they saw stairs identical to the ones they had just climbed.

Stairs going up.

But the moment they found them, an unfamiliar voice reached their ears.

“Oh my, what brings so many guests today?”