Chapter 26

Chapter 26 - Sadang Station Exit 4 (2)

[2. Can you hear it? Can you hear the flute?]

Author: Anonymous

Today, I'm born again, Freed from a tedious daily life, Skipping even a last goodbye. So long, wretched existence, To a place where the sun never sets, Give me my freedom.

---

"You said it was Exit 4, right?"

After getting off work, Ju-hee rushed straight to Sadang Station.

Du-pal had already arrived there.

They had gathered as soon as circumstances allowed, but without Su-myeon, they had no real plan.

They searched every corner inside the station and around Exit 4 without any direction, but couldn't find a single trace of Su-myeon.

Ha-min arrived shortly after and spoke urgently.

"But did you see it? The post that Su-myeon hyung and Han-su hyung mentioned."

The two of them had headed to Sadang Station after seeing an account posted online.

Ha-min showed them that the person who appeared to be the author of the post they'd seen had uploaded something new.

What looked like a random string of sentences read like a poem that didn't quite make sense.

A jumbled piece of writing that seemed like someone having a mental breakdown.

Various opinions were popping up on the forum about the post, but none of them were particularly helpful.

"It does seem suspicious, doesn't it? Can any of you make anything of it?"

Ha-min asked again. But the others couldn't think of anything noteworthy from reading the post either.

Young-cheol was the last to arrive, but all that changed was the headcount.

"How the hell does someone just vanish in a place this crowded...."

Even past rush hour, Sadang Station was still packed late into the night.

Du-pal stood there looking around in bewilderment, utterly at a loss.

People flowed past like a current—just standing still felt like you were getting in the way.

The stream of those entering and leaving the station split into two endless rivers on either side.

The group, caught in the middle, could do nothing but stand there gripped by helplessness, blocking that flow.

They hadn't found a single clue about the person who'd vanished into this crowd.

***

"Are you alright?"

Han-su looked at Su-myeon with concern.

Su-myeon's left eye, fitted with an unfamiliar lens, had turned gray.

The foreign sensation of something he wasn't used to was a bit uncomfortable, but not enough to be a real problem.

"Yeah, I think so?"

Uneasy just in case, he tried removing and reinserting the lens a few times.

But contrary to his worries, the lens came off his eye without any issues.

It didn't seem to help with his vision—wearing his glasses over it made no difference at all.

"Looks like I'm becoming a regular...."

And once again, the one who'd delivered the item was the plush cat with the peculiar way of speaking—Cheshire.

Su-myeon averted his gaze from the button eyes leaning in curiously, as if fascinated by the lens in his eye, and answered.

"Thank you."

"Don't mention it~"

Han-su was startled by the doll that appeared out of nowhere, but he seemed to come to terms with it quickly enough.

A talking, moving plush doll was actually easier to wrap one's head around.

Wasn't it better than the path you'd been walking suddenly transforming into another world and looping infinitely?

'......Is that really any different, though?'

Su-myeon cleared the stray thought from his mind and blinked a few times.

When he covered his right eye, only his left eye, glowing gray, was revealed.

Through the lens, the uncanny distortions within this space and reality itself were now clearly distinguishable.

"Can you see the way out now?"

Before answering Han-su's question, Su-myeon looked around a bit more.

He already knew every condition required for escape from having played the game.

The problem was that those conditions were extremely difficult.

"Not yet. The passage back to reality only appears when there's a clean corridor with nothing suspicious about it."

Like a game of spot-the-difference—you had to pass through a corridor where no anomalies were visible in order to return to the real world.

If it wasn't clean, you had to stop going forward and turn back.

"Then what's wrong with this one?"

Han-su couldn't see anything unusual.

But through Su-myeon's truth-seeing lens, the grotesque spots were emphasized even more.

"......One entire side of the wall is connected by blood vessels."

As though a living organism were mimicking a building.

Beyond the tile-covered wall, blood vessels writhed in clusters.

An illusion covered their surface, so through a normal right eye, all you'd see was a uniform white tile wall.

But once he was certain of the anomaly and looked again, the grout between the tiles caught his eye—smeared into a reddish-brown, like clumps of oxidized blood.

At a glance, it was a trivial enough detail that one might dismiss it as nothing more than old grime.

Su-myeon was about to turn back the way they came when he noticed Cheshire still hovering in place.

"Hmm~"

"Not planning on going back this time either?"

At Su-myeon's words, Cheshire, floating in midair, nodded.

"Yep."

A single-word answer. Nothing more. Han-su directed another question at the plush doll that offered no further explanation.

"Why is that?"

"Mm...."

But Cheshire answered in a voice so devoid of energy it drained the motivation out of anyone listening.

"Too lazy... to explain."

An uncertain entity with an uncertain purpose tagging along—what a thing.

If this wasn't a one-off from Ellis Hotel but kept repeating, they needed to pin something down.

The items available from Belle's shop were quite effective, in particular.

If Cheshire was connected to all that, building rapport couldn't hurt.

Su-myeon deliberately reached out and picked up the Cheshire doll, cradling him as he asked.

Trapped in an inescapable situation, Su-myeon wanted to find the smoothest path available.

"Do you want to help me?"

Cheshire sat docilely in Su-myeon's hands, like a drowsy cat.

At the very least, Su-myeon was certain of one thing—the shop that only he could see, and Cheshire, its delivery courier.

He was sure they were extending some kind of goodwill toward him.

"Mm.... Who knows?"

Cheshire, idly pulling the zipper on his belly up and down, added briefly.

"I want to watch."

A more neutral word than "help."

But Su-myeon thought curiosity was actually preferable to incomprehensible goodwill.

As long as he provided enough of a spectacle, wouldn't Cheshire keep treating him favorably like this?

He looked to Han-su, who nodded, apparently seeing no reason to reject Cheshire's company.

"Alright, then let's move together."

Su-myeon's eyes could see the blood vessels in the wall pulsing larger and larger.

Not knowing how they might react, Su-myeon and Han-su ended the conversation and hurried back the way they'd come.

With Cheshire perched on his shoulder, Su-myeon began walking the endlessly repeating corridor again.

The scenery was so repetitive it was mind-numbing.

Handprints were stamped across the cold tile floor, and the figures in sagging posters had their eyes gouged out, weeping tears of blood.

Then, a wall with an enormous electronic display appeared.

The screen flickered with fragmented images of an old amusement park, filled with strange static noise.

They had been walking for so long that Cheshire yawned as if drowsy.

"Is the way out... actually going to appear?"

By that point, Han-su asked as if he were genuinely curious—nothing more.

He hadn't meant it as a rush, but Su-myeon felt a pang of urgency.

<UTG> was not a game that aimed for a rational world.

The anomalous world that trapped people who were unlucky enough to stumble into an urban legend wouldn't let them go easily.

The correct corridor appeared purely by chance, and you had to seize the moment without hesitation.

"It'll show up eventually."

The problem was simply not knowing whether it would be the tenth corridor or the hundredth.

Swallowing the rest of his words, Su-myeon turned around with Han-su once more and walked on.

Trapped in what felt like a Mobius strip, they stopped short—even though they had turned around, the loop brought them back to the same spot.

"......!"

The corridor scenery had become familiar to the point of nausea, but this time it was different.

A stranger was walking toward them.

Moving with stiff, unnatural motions—like a wooden puppet learning to walk.

Slowly approaching the two from the opposite direction.

"Who...."

Han-su opened his mouth, but Su-myeon stopped him.

The man walking toward them with heavy steps was someone neither had seen before.

A reasonably handsome man who appeared to be in his mid-thirties, dressed in a sharp suit.

But as Su-myeon examined him, he raised a hand.

"That employee ID."

At Su-myeon's words, Han-su narrowed his eyes and looked at the stranger as well.

The employee ID hanging around his neck bore the company name Shinseong Group, printed largest of all.

Realizing why Su-myeon had pointed it out, Han-su answered quietly.

"Isn't that Ju-hee's company?"

Su-myeon nodded at Han-su's words.

"She said their executive director went missing, right?"

"I heard he was a young, tall man."

Han-su recalled the information he'd gotten from Ju-hee.

They whispered to each other while watching the stranger in silence.

He moved as if he couldn't see Su-myeon or Han-su at all.

Walking toward them as if they didn't exist, the man turned without hesitation at some point.

He walked straight toward a dead-end wall.

Contrary to their expectation that he would collide with it, he slipped right through without obstruction.

"......Wait."

A wall—walked straight through. An impossible sight.

It had a different sort of context from the blood seeping from walls or stains forming on the floor—just another anomaly to be dismissed.

Besides, something suspicious had flickered across Su-myeon's left eye.

He covered his right eye entirely and looked through only the lens-fitted left—and the anomaly became even sharper.

"There's a hidden passage there."

What appeared to be yet another identical tile wall was nothing more than an optical illusion.

Beyond the truth revealed by the lens was a passage concealed behind thin, veil-like curtains of blood vessels.

Watching the stranger disappear completely into that passage, Su-myeon deliberated.

What if that man was the one Ju-hee had mentioned—the one who'd vanished?

"Our missing acquaintances might be in there too."

Han-su spoke in a confused voice, seemingly thinking the same thing.

Should they follow? It was a dilemma.

From what he could see at the moment, the passage didn't appear to be closing or shifting.

"As long as we don't lose our way, we can come back...."

Between the two of them deliberating, Cheshire spoke up languidly.

"Paths don't deceive people~ So. Just retrace the way you came."

Given that they were already in a suspicious place they'd entered without knowing, trusting that was difficult.

As if aware of that doubt, Cheshire added.

"It's not the paths that deceive—it's other things. But hey, you've got eyes that see the truth now, don't you~?"

Cheshire waved a round paw lazily.

He asked, as if nudging the two of them standing there lost in thought.

"So, are you going~?"

Would they choose to walk down that unknown path solely for the sake of others?

Cheshire's prodding sounded almost like a test posed to those standing at a crossroads.

Naturally, Su-myeon hesitated amid the uncertainty.

Whether Cheshire's claim—that they could simply retrace their steps—was true or not, there was no way to know.

Heading down an unfamiliar path in a place where any number of impossible things could happen was nothing short of a gamble.

Either his guess was right, or it was wrong. An unfair gamble with only two outcomes.

"Let's go."

But Su-myeon made his decision.

His own family might be trapped, bewitched, somewhere just like this.

Even if the chance was only one percent, he couldn't ignore a possibility.

Having come far enough to even consider such a theory, turning back now would mean not a single night of restful sleep—that much was obvious.