I land standing this time, in the middle of a street that's too bright to be anything but daytime, except it isn't daytime, it's just lit like a stage set that never learned how to turn itself off.
Somewhere down the block a speaker plays a song I recognize from an actual radio, actual real life, and for one disorienting second the familiarity of it is worse than any of the wrongness I've learned to catalog since the first room.
Storefronts stretch in both directions, glass fronts stacked with skincare in pastel packaging, K-pop posters taped in windows, the specific glittering noise of a shopping street built entirely to be photographed.
I know this place. Myeongdong, or close enough to it that my legs already know which way the subway exit should be. I came here once, a real once, years ago, dragged along on some group date I didn't want to be at, bored out of my mind in front of a cosmetics shop not unlike the ones lining this exact street. I don't know if that's a memory this place borrowed on purpose or just a coincidence too specific to be comfortable.
"HP: 380/380." My wrist buzzes it at me, small and clinical, before I've even found my footing. Untouched. Whatever that fall cost, it wasn't blood. Small mercy. I don't get many of those handed to me for free.
Jung-su is already on his feet a few meters off, scanning the street the way he scans every new room now — exits first, people second, everything else last. He's faster to his feet every stage now, I've noticed. None of us talk about why that keeps happening.
Mrs. Bae has two kids by the wrist before I've finished standing up, the same reflex she's had since the first time I ever saw her do it. These aren't the same two kids from the platform, or the two from the food court after that. I've stopped keeping track of which specific children she's protecting from cycle to cycle. It stopped being the point somewhere around the second stage.
Areum lands hardest, stumbling into a storefront window that doesn't break, swearing under her breath in a way that sounds more like relief than pain. She checks her own arm out of habit before anything else, the old scar from that first rescue back at COEX, healed too fast to ever make sense of, still there under her sleeve like a private joke between her body and whatever's been fixing it.
That's five of us, accounted for, on our feet, breathing. My brain does the count automatically now, the same reflex Mrs. Bae runs on the kids, and it catches on the gap before I've even decided to look for it.
Five where there used to be six. Nobody says his name out loud. Nobody has to. The space he'd have filled just standing here, joking about the view, sits empty in a way none of us are ready to talk about yet, and I watch everyone else notice it too, in the half-second of quiet before Areum makes herself speak first.
"Everyone still attached to their own body?" she says, straightening up.
"Define attached," Jung-su says, and for the first time in days something in his voice sounds almost like it could be a joke. It's the kind of joke that would have sounded wrong out of him a few stages ago. It doesn't anymore, which is its own small, quiet kind of progress none of us are going to say out loud.
Yuna's already helping a stranger up nearby, gentle, unhurried, the exact kind of instinct that made all of us trust her the first hour we met her. She's got a way of making the smallest kindness look effortless, like it never once occurred to her that helping a stranger might cost her anything at all.
I don't think about that word — trust — long enough to notice I'm using it. I just watch her steady someone's shoulder and feel the same warmth I always feel around her, uncomplicated, easy.
Jung-su doesn't answer her, still turning slowly on the spot, cataloging the street the same methodical way he's catalogued every other room since I met him. Whatever peace he's making with this one, he's making it slower than the rest of us.
"You don't have to enjoy anything," Areum tells him, not unkindly. "Just don't forget how, in case we ever get somewhere safe enough to remember."
He almost smiles at that. It's the first time I've seen him come close since the platform.
"This one's almost pretty," she says, looking up and down the street. "Feels wrong to say that out loud."
"Say it anyway," Areum says. "God knows we could use pretty."
Yuna falls into step beside me, close enough that I catch the smell of the same fake sunscreen every storefront window seems to be selling. "You okay?" she asks, low, just for me. "You've been quiet since we landed."
"Just tired." It's not a lie, exactly. It's just not the whole truth either, the same way most things I say out loud these days aren't quite either one.
"You're allowed to be tired," she says. "Nobody here thinks less of you for it."
I want to believe her. Wanting that is not the same as forgetting Namsan. Yuna made one honest call there, the chain changed, and Yohan died moving on her word. She knows exactly what a warning can cost now. That is why I listen—not because she is always right, but because neither of us thinks being careful makes us infallible anymore.
Nobody argues with that. The street really is beautiful, in the specific over-lit way real Myeongdong is beautiful — too much color, too much noise, built for a kind of joy none of us currently have room for.
Words settle over the street before any of us have finished getting our bearings, patient, unhurried, the same handwriting that's never once been in a hurry to tell us anything.
STAGE 5 — TIER D.
CLEAR CONDITION: TERMINATE THE FRIEND.
FAILURE CONDITION: THE FRIEND CLAIMS EVERY SURVIVOR IT ISOLATES.
The words do not identify the Friend. Then I notice the costume.
That's when I notice the costume.
A mascot, tall, round-headed, some cartoon rabbit or bear or something built to be instantly adorable, standing outside a cosmetics shop with both arms raised in a permanent wave.
It's exactly the kind of thing that would be standing outside a shop like this on any ordinary Tuesday, handing out sample-size lotion to bored teenagers.
Nobody reacts to it. That's the whole design of a mascot — you're supposed to walk past it without a second thought. That's the cruelest part of how it's built, if it was built at all and didn't just find this shape waiting for it. The one thing this street trained everyone to ignore is the one thing actually worth watching.
I walk past it too, at first.
The rest of us keep walking another few steps before we notice he's stopped at all. That's new too — a week ago, none of us would have thought to look back and check.
It's Jung-su who stops, half a block later, and turns back to look at it again.
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"How long has it been waving," he says, mostly to himself.
I follow his eyes back down the street. The mascot is still there, same position, same wave, same tilt of its big foam head.
"It's a costume," I say. "That's the job. Wave at people." I want it to be that simple. Wanting it doesn't make it true, and some small, tired part of me already knows that before Jung-su says another word.
"Try it for an hour straight sometime," he says. "Nobody's arms work like that." He says it flat, no drama in it at all, which somehow makes it worse than if he'd sounded scared.
Something small and cold moves through my chest, the same wrongness-recognition I've started trusting more than I trust most things anyone tells me out loud. I've learned to trust that feeling more than almost anything else left in me. It's never once been wrong yet, and some tired part of me keeps waiting for the first time it is.
A group of teenagers walks past with their phones out. Silver bracelets circle every wrist. They are participants like us, but they have not yet accepted that this is not the real Myeongdong. One boy high-fives the raised paw without looking away from his screen.
The mascot catches his wrist.
He laughs first. His friends do too. Then the white glove tightens and the bones in his forearm break one after another, four dry pops beneath the foam.
The mascot pulls him close. A seam opens through its painted smile, stretching from cheek to cheek. There is no performer inside—only wet black gums and rows of small human-looking teeth.
It closes the costume head over his face. The boy kicks hard enough to lose a shoe. When the mascot lifts its head again, everything above his lower jaw is gone. Blood sheets down the bright white fur while it chews.
His phone lands camera-up and keeps recording.
Heat drives through my chest. The boy's final reflex—to run even after the first bone broke—settles into my legs.
HUMAN ECHO ABSORBED
AGI: 41 → 44
WILL: 34 → 37
The mascot chews. My numbers rise. I hate both facts equally.
"Maybe it's motorized," Areum says, not sounding like she believes it. "Some kind of automated display. Malls do that."
We watch it for a while, longer than feels normal, longer than any of us want to admit we're spending on a foam rabbit.
A woman in a cosmetics-shop uniform passes within arm's reach of it, box cutter still clipped to her apron and a silver bracelet bright against her wrist. Another participant pulled straight from work, trying to treat the familiar street like somewhere normal. The mascot does not react to her. Whatever it is waiting for, it is not merely the nearest person.
It never lowers its arms. It never shifts its weight. It never once breaks whatever pose it started in, the way an actual exhausted human being inside a costume always eventually would. I count to sixty in my head, just to be sure, the same way I've started counting everything that scares me lately, like numbers might be the one thing in this place that never lies.
"Maybe there's not a real person in there at all," Areum says, quiet, like she doesn't want the mascot to hear its own diagnosis.
Areum crouches slightly, getting a better angle on it from underneath, the way you'd check a vending machine for the coin slot nobody bothered hiding. "No zipper," she says, quiet. "No seam anywhere I can find. Costumes have seams."
Jung-su doesn't answer that either. He's already looking for the exits instead, the same reflex he's run since the first room, like some part of him decided a long time ago that understanding a threat and surviving it are two separate jobs, and he'd rather be good at the second one.
Mrs. Bae has already turned her kids the other way, physically, both small shoulders under her hands, so neither of them has to watch whatever happens next. She doesn't explain why. She never does. She just moves, certain, the same way she's moved every single time something in one of these rooms turned out to be worse than it looked.
Nobody answers her. Nobody needs to.
Further down the street, more of them — a second mascot outside a phone case shop, a third crouched near a bubble tea stand handing out flyers to nobody, since there's nobody left in this fake version of Myeongdong to actually take one. All three of them are doing the same thing at once, tirelessly, the way you'd expect an actual promotional campaign to look if you never thought too hard about it.
I don't know yet if there's one of these things wearing three costumes, or three of them wearing one idea. Either answer scares me about the same amount.
A woman near us peels off from her own group, drawn toward the mascot the way anyone would be drawn toward something built specifically to be irresistible.
She's younger than most of us, alone, the kind of alone that's been sitting on her face since the second she landed on this street.
She's got a shopping bag still looped over one wrist, some ordinary purchase from some ordinary life, like whatever pulled her into this room caught her mid-errand and never gave her time to set it down.
I don't know her name. I've stopped assuming I'll get the chance to learn everyone's, the same reflexive grief-management that's kept me upright since the first room. Somewhere behind me I hear one of Mrs. Bae's kids ask what's wrong with the rabbit, in the plain, unfiltered way only a child would actually say the thing everyone else is thinking.
One of her hands keeps drifting to a spot on her own collarbone, like she's checking for something that isn't there anymore, or bracing for something that hasn't happened yet. I don't know which. I don't get the chance to ask before the mascot decides for both of us.
She's crying, quiet, the specific kind of crying people do when they've decided nobody's supposed to notice. Whatever this stage took from her on the way in, she hasn't said it out loud to any of us yet. Whatever brought her to this stage alone, it's already cost her more than any of us know yet, and the street around her doesn't care enough to notice.
Up close it's bigger than it looked from the sidewalk, tall enough that its huge round eyes sit a full head above hers, painted on, glossy, the kind of face that's supposed to read as friendly from thirty feet away and just reads as wrong from three.
Its paws are white gloves, oversized, the kind every mascot costume ever made seems to come with. They close around her shoulders slow, deliberate, nothing like the loose, sloppy movement an actual person sweating inside thirty pounds of foam would manage after an hour on their feet. Up close I can see stitching along one seam, small, deliberate, exactly the kind of detail a real costume would have and a thing pretending to be one would bother getting right anyway, just to be thorough.
The mascot's head turns toward her before she's said a single word.
"Don't," I say, too late, the same one word I've learned to say too late more times than I want to count.
She's already close enough to touch it. It wraps both foam arms around her, gentle, a hug built for a children's birthday party, and for one long second nothing happens at all except a stranger getting exactly the kind of comfort she clearly needed.
It's not a costume tilt. Costume heads are heavy, built to be worn, clumsy on their hinges. This moves like a real head on a real neck, smooth, unhurried, aimed at us with the specific patience of something that has never once needed to rush.
Then the mascot's head tilts, slow, wrong, toward the rest of us watching.
And smiles wider than foam should be able to smile.
My bracelet vibrates when I focus on the thing. I turn my wrist without taking my eyes off its hands.
TARGET LEVEL: 11
Su-min's HP remains private. The monster's level does not. I don't know whether four is low for one of these things. I know it is the same level I am.
Numbers, at least, hold still long enough to be trusted.
Mrs. Bae is already between her kids and the mascot, arms out, the exact posture she's had every single time something in one of these rooms turned out to be worse than it looked.
"Get behind me," she says to the kids, not raising her voice, not needing to.
"That's not a costume," Jung-su says, already moving. "That's never been a costume."
Areum's already running. Mrs. Bae is already pulling her kids the other way, fast, without needing to be told.
Yuna grabs my arm, hard, the same grip Jung-su used on me back on the platform a lifetime of stages ago. I feel the grip and, underneath it, that same unplaceable certainty I've stopped questioning — small, wordless, arriving before the logic does. This time it's telling me to go anyway.
"Wait," she says. "We don't know what it does yet. Rushing in blind gets people killed."
She's right. She's always right, in the specific, careful way that's made her the easiest person in this group to listen to. I used to think that was comforting. Right now, closing the last few meters between me and a stranger held in something's arms, it just feels like one more voice telling me to wait, and I've run out of patience for waiting.
Somewhere behind me I hear Jung-su swear, low, and the sound of him moving too, boots against pavement, closing the distance faster than a man his age should be able to manage. Areum's already ahead of both of us, closing on the mascot's far side, cutting off whatever direction it might have been planning to bolt.
I look at the woman still held in its arms, still smiling like she hasn't noticed anything's wrong yet, and I don't wait.
Behind me, I hear Yuna say something else, quieter, that I don't catch and don't stop to ask her to repeat, something that sounds almost like my name, almost like a warning, gone under the sound of my own feet hitting pavement before I can turn back for it.
The mascot's head is still turning toward the rest of us, slow, patient, delighted, like it's got all the time in this bright fake afternoon to decide who gets to be its next friend. Behind that painted, permanent smile, something is deciding, unhurried, exactly which one of us gets to find out first what it actually is.