A chill of realization crept down Seojun’s spine.
He had made the mistake of forcing the chef into a single, conventional role. Yet one look at the dilapidated campsite was enough to make him reconsider.
The makeshift kitchen was in complete disarray. A grease-stained, filthy Bobby stood amid the clutter, while a half-rotted corpse lay abandoned in one corner. The dining hall and dormitory were marginally tidier, but both bore the unmistakable signs of long neglect.
And the campfire grounds?
Even remembering them was enough to make his skin crawl. The place seemed steeped in the stale, oppressive atmosphere of a horror story.
“Shit...”
Seojun muttered under his breath, staring at Bobby.
He had judged the situation far too hastily. With so few people running the camp, there was no reason a single person could not be responsible for several jobs.
The manager could very well have been the cook too.
The moment that possibility settled in his mind, Seojun’s knees began to buckle. Before his legs could give way entirely, Johan reached out and caught him.
“Jun.”
Johan’s voice was calm and steady. He offered support without making a fuss.
Seojun’s gaze fell first upon the hand holding him upright. From there, his eyes travelled up Johan’s muscular arm, across his broad shoulders, and finally to his intense eyes and sharply defined jaw.
For one brief moment, Seojun’s heart lurched.
Johan looked strong. Dependable.
And before the night was over, some unseen horror could tear that powerful body to pieces.
A knot tightened in Seojun’s throat. He shoved the thought away at once.
He would have preferred to remain an ignorant bystander, even if that made him a coward. But he was already here, trapped inside Hamon Camp with scraped palms and blood soaking through his shoulder.
There was no turning back now.
Seojun bit hard into the inside of his cheek. The sharp sting was almost welcome, giving him something tangible to focus on instead of the terrifying possibilities spiralling through his mind.
“Do you want to live, Johan?”
“Absolutely!”
Bobby blurted out the answer before Johan could even open his mouth.
Seojun narrowed his eyes. He could not have cared less whether Bobby lived or died. His attention remained fixed on Johan as he waited for the answer that actually mattered.
A smile slowly spread across Johan’s face.
Even in the dim light, his gentle features remained clearly visible. Yet there was something faintly unsettling about that smile.
Was this really the time to be smiling?
Seojun was just beginning to dwell on the thought when Johan spoke softly, cutting through his unease.
“Of course, Jun. I want to live a happy life, and I’m doing everything I can to achieve it.”
“Right...”
Scepticism coloured Seojun’s reply.
Still, whatever doubts he might have had, one thing was undeniable. Everyone standing in this miserable excuse for a kitchen shared the same objective.
They wanted to survive this nightmare.
Seojun turned away from Johan and barked at Bobby.
“Bobby. The map.”
They had no time to waste.
Their best chance of avoiding an even greater tragedy rested with Christina. In the suffocating darkness surrounding them, she was the closest thing they had to hope. They needed to do everything possible to ease the burden on her, both physically and mentally.
Unfortunately, Bobby possessed neither quick wits nor urgency.
He was simply slow.
Seojun felt entirely justified in losing his patience.
“Bobby, a map is a piece of paper covered in symbols. While you stand there wasting time, your friends’ lives are hanging in the balance. Hand it over. Now.”
He raised the knife and waved it once, more as a warning than a genuine threat.
Bobby squealed like a pig that had just caught sight of the butcher’s blade.
“You took the map from me in the forest!”
Tears gathered in Bobby’s eyes, giving him the wounded look of a victim.
On reflection, Seojun had to admit that Bobby might actually be one.
He answered without a trace of sympathy.
“You should have said something sooner, Bobby.”
Faced with Seojun’s threatening expression, Bobby was too frightened even to cry properly. He turned desperately to Johan for support.
“Johan, why are you siding with this lunatic while he waves a knife around?”
“Bobby, Seojun is injured. I can’t believe you’re being so inconsiderate right now.”
“Ugh!”
Johan’s response only made Bobby more furious.
Seojun, meanwhile, felt strangely reassured. He was glad he had never wasted his time becoming friends with these people.
At moments like this, solitude seemed like a blessing.
Ignoring Bobby’s laboured breathing, Seojun reached into his back pocket.
Behind him, Johan swallowed audibly, then leaned close enough to whisper into his ear.
“Jun, do you need help with that?”
“No?”
Seojun pulled out a neatly folded map.
Once opened, it proved to be nothing more than an ordinary sheet of graph paper. Bobby stared at it and muttered mournfully under his breath.
“My map...”
Entirely indifferent to Bobby’s grief, Seojun spread the paper across the floor and held a lantern over it.
Three heads bent above the map. A slender finger pointed to one of the marked locations.
“All right. This is the administration building. I entered between the guardhouse and the restaurant. But the second I stepped into Hamon Camp, I ran into that Gas Mask bastard coming out of the guardhouse.”
“You really were unlucky, Jun.”
Under normal circumstances, such a remark from the male lead of a horror movie would have been debatable.
Today, however, Johan was absolutely right.
Seojun had been spectacularly unlucky.
He nodded and continued.
“Yeah. I was too busy running for my life to question why that man was already there. But now it makes sense. Gas Mask is both the chef and the manager of Hamon Camp.”
Bobby interrupted him.
“But how did you see the bear-claw scars on his face if he was wearing a gas mask?”
“Uh... We struggled, and the mask shifted. I saw his face through the gap,” Seojun explained quickly.
Bobby still looked unconvinced.
“You didn’t even have a flashlight or a lantern.”
“The moon was bright enough.”
Seojun pressed the cold handle of his knife against Bobby’s cheek and pushed his face aside.
Whether Bobby believed him or had merely taken the hint, he asked no further questions.
Seojun turned to Johan, his expression growing serious.
“Johan, trying to make a phone call now would be the same as walking straight into the lion’s den. You’d be putting yourself directly into the killer’s hands. It would be suicide.”
Anxiety surged through him.
Seojun dragged his nails across his scalp, scratching so violently that he nearly broke the skin. The sting was sharp, but the fear gnawing at him was sharper still.
Just as he felt himself losing control, Johan closed a firm hand around his slender wrist and stopped him.
“I understand, Jun. Life is fragile, like a single strand of hair. Once it’s gone, it never comes back.”
The comparison was peculiar.
Even more peculiar was the way Johan gently unfolded Seojun’s fingers one by one.
Still, Seojun could not help grinning as he proudly indicated his thick head of hair.
“Don’t worry. Everyone in my family has excellent hair.”
Judging by the old family photographs he had seen, even his great-grandparents had retained full heads of hair into old age.
He slipped his fingers free of Johan’s grasp and continued.
“The quickest way to the guardhouse is through the campfire grounds. We also have no idea which direction Christina and the others took...”
“I agree.”
And so the three of them decided to head for the guardhouse.
Bobby, however, wanted no part of the plan.
He retreated into a corner of the kitchen and shouted at them.
“I-I’m not going out there! Have you all lost your minds? If Seojun is telling the truth, there are monsters, murderers and even lunatics with crossbows wandering around outside!”
Seojun reviewed the situation in his mind.
When Bobby put it that way, their circumstances really did sound hopeless.
He nodded calmly.
“Of course. If Bobby wants to stay here, I won’t stop him. It’s his life, his decision and, ultimately, his funeral. We may never see one another again after tonight, but this is what Bobby wants. Whether the killer mutilates him, a monster tears him apart, or he slowly suffocates beneath the terror of waiting for death alone in this hellhole, I respect his choice.”
“Fine! I’ll go!”
Bobby sprang upright.
Seojun merely shrugged. He had never intended to force Bobby to come with them.
“Shouldn’t Bobby have something to defend himself with?” Johan asked, genuine concern for his friend in his voice.
He had a point.
Bobby was completely unarmed.
Unfortunately, the kitchen’s only viable makeshift weapons—a kitchen knife and a barbecue skewer—had already been claimed by Seojun and Johan.
Fortunately, Seojun immediately came up with an alternative.
He gently placed a tin pot over Bobby’s head.
Johan burst out laughing.
“Look at you, Bobby. You’re practically bulletproof now.”
Bobby’s eyes filled with tears yet again.
Moving carefully, they eased the warped door open by a few inches.
Miraculously, the hinges had survived the monster’s rampage.
Johan took the lead. He peered through the opening, checked the area outside, then offered Seojun his hand.
“Come on, Jun. The coast is clear.”
“All right.”
Seojun grasped Johan’s arm and stepped through the doorway.
He had braced himself for the fresh scent of the forest and the cool air drifting from the lake.
Instead, the stench of stagnant water struck him first, followed by the metallic tang of blood.
Disgusting.
Still, at least the monster itself was nowhere in sight.
The evidence of its passage, however, was impossible to miss.
Trees had been snapped like twigs. Deep trenches had been gouged into the earth by enormous limbs.
The creature might have vanished, but the air remained taut with dread, as though it could burst from the darkness again at any moment.
The tin pot wobbling on his head, Bobby finally peered outside. He stretched his neck like a wary turtle and anxiously scanned the surrounding forest.
“Are we absolutely certain that thing is gone?”
“Johan, we need to move,” Seojun said urgently. “We’ve already wasted far too much time.”
“Right.”
“Hello? Is anyone listening to me? Have you all suddenly gone deaf? Am I talking to myself? Hey! Hey!”
Bobby’s voice climbed higher with every word as the others continued to ignore him.
Without another glance back, they left the eerie darkness of B-zone behind.
Every step carried them farther into the night—and closer to whatever was waiting for them.