Through the small door lay a corridor of modest length, its walls covered in dark-red patterned wallpaper that had blistered and peeled away in places.
At the far end of the corridor, a dining room blazed with light.
The dining room was no less lavishly appointed than the hall before it.
At its centre stood a long, narrow rosewood dining table — narrow enough that a seated guest had only to stretch an arm to reach across — draped in a white tablecloth with utensils set in perfect order, high-backed chairs ranged along either side.
But what seized everyone’s attention were the figures already seated at the table.
Seven or eight of them, all in modern clothing — men and women, old and young.
They sat expressionless, eyes vacant, cutting at the food on their plates with an utterly mechanical precision, then lifting each piece to their mouths on a fork, chewing, swallowing.
There was no exchange of any kind.
They were like a troupe of marionettes whose souls had been hollowed out.
The arrival of the newcomers into the dining room drew no reaction whatsoever.
“Those people…”
Wrench had only just recovered from his shock when the words slipped out of him in an involuntary whisper.
The sound was jarringly out of place in the silence of the dining room.
Almost the instant he spoke—
Swish—
Every one of the “puppet-people” still eating froze mid-motion.
As one, they turned their heads.
Those empty, hollow eyes fixed themselves squarely on Wrench.
[Please maintain silence.
Avoid making unnecessary noise.]
Shido Makoto felt his heart plummet.
It’s over.
A moment later, Wrench’s eyes flew wide.
Beads of cold sweat rolled from his temples.
His body began to shake violently beyond his control.
His mouth gaped open; his throat produced a rattling, rasping sound — clearly he was trying to cry out for help, yet could not form a single word.
Then, as everyone looked on in horror, something nightmarish happened.
Wrench’s body was seized as if by an invisible giant fist, and began to be crushed inward.
“Crack… crack-crack…”
The sound of bones snapping and grinding out of alignment.
His limbs twisted into angles that no living body should be capable of.
His chest caved rapidly inward.
The blood drained from his skin under the immense pressure.
His eyes were wrenched so wide that his eyeballs looked ready to burst free of their warping sockets.
The whole thing took less than three seconds.
One moment a healthy young man; the next, Wrench lay on the floor in utter silence — a collapsed, boneless heap of pulped flesh.
“Aah—!!”
Xiao Hui witnessed the grotesque scene, and the scream building in her throat nearly tore free.
But at the very last instant, she threw every ounce of strength she had into clamping both hands over her own mouth.
The sheer terror brought tears streaming from her eyes.
Her body went as limp as wet noodles, and she nearly crumpled to the floor — only to be caught by the painter beside her.
The painter’s own face was no different from a corpse’s.
Both legs trembled as though about to buckle.
She bit down hard on her lower lip until she could taste iron, using the pain to force herself not to make a sound.
‘Just now… if I had touched that painting just now…’
She was overwhelmingly grateful that Shido Makoto had pulled her back in time.
Otherwise it was very likely she who would now be lying on that floor.
The programmer had gone so far as to brace himself against the wall, his stomach turning over and over.
Even Shirogane Kei, who had seemed composed until now, had gone deathly pale, her fists clenched so tightly that it was barely enough to keep herself from losing her composure.
Shido Makoto could feel his own heart hammering furiously, on the verge of leaping straight out of his throat.
This was the first time in two lifetimes that he had watched a living person die before his eyes — in so horrifying a manner.
The visual and psychological impact was a hundred times more violent than anything in any horror film.
‘Calm down.
Calm down.’
He kept repeating it to himself, then forced his gaze away from the thing on the floor.
The dining room fell silent again.
Only the heavy, ragged breathing of the five survivors remained.
As everyone stood paralysed between advancing and retreating, a figure in a maid’s uniform rose slowly from beside the dining table.
Like the other puppet-people, her expression was blank, her eyes hollow.
She turned toward the five standing at the doorway and said, without any trace of feeling:
“Please be seated, guests.
Dinner has begun.”
Despite her words, the five of them stared at the grotesque scene before them, and not one dared move.
Wrench’s contorted corpse lay not far from the doorway.
Everyone was terrified of sharing his fate.
Yet standing still indefinitely was no solution either.
The tick of the grandfather clock sounded like a constant, relentless prod.
Shido Makoto’s mind was running at full speed.
The second known rule was that they must not miss dinner under any circumstances.
And now the hour was already past seven; they had arrived at the dining room — so by that measure they had honoured the appointment?
But the maid had said “please be seated.” If they did not comply, would that be counted as missing dinner in another form?
He did not dare gamble on it.
Taking a deep breath, Shido Makoto was the first to step forward.
He moved with extreme care, picking his way around the unnameable mass on the floor, and made his way toward the dining table.
As a precaution, he kept his movements as light as possible — each footfall barely producing a sound.
Shirogane Kei followed close behind, her movements equally cautious.
The remaining three, seeing the two leaders move, had no choice but to swallow their fear and trail after, step by trembling step.
One by one, the five of them took the empty seats remaining at the table.
The food on the dining table was extravagant beyond reason.
Pan-seared steak, roast chicken, vegetable salad, freshly baked bread fragrant with the smell of grain.
Everything looked perfect — save for the faint metallic smell drifting through the air, and the dread that had settled like a stone in every chest.
No one had any appetite.
Especially when, with the memory of Wrench’s horrible end still fresh, they looked at the meat on the plates in front of them — the association it conjured was not one anyone wanted.
Shido Makoto swept a quick glance across the dining table.
After their five had sat down, several seats still sat empty.
And the puppet-people, once the newcomers were seated, had resumed their mechanical eating exactly as before — as though nothing at all had happened.
Shido Makoto noticed that the puppet-people’s plates seemed inexhaustible.
No matter how much they ate, the steak or roast chicken on their plates always remained intact and whole.
It was a phenomenon that defied every physical law.
‘Are these people ones who missed a previous dinner?
Or something else entirely?’ He turned it over in his mind.
Time crawled by, second by second.
All five sat rigidly upright, motionless, even their breathing deliberately slowed.
No one dared speak.
No one dared touch the food.
Xiao Hui’s tears continued to stream silently down her face; she bit her lip, not daring to let a single sob escape.
The programmer’s forehead was sheened with cold sweat.
He did not even dare raise his eyes to look at the puppet-people across from him, keeping his gaze fixed on the plate before him.
Shirogane Kei’s expression remained cool on the surface, but beneath the table her hands were clenched tight — she was fighting hard to contain her fear.
Only Shido Makoto had temporarily overcome his terror enough to observe everything around him.
He turned his attention first to the paintings on the dining room walls.
Like the ones in the entrance hall, they depicted scenes of aristocratic life.
But Shido Makoto noticed something with a sharp sense of unease: the postures and expressions of the figures within the paintings seemed subtly different from what he had seen when he first entered the dining room.
A noblewoman who had been smiling now wore a smile that had curdled into something wrong.
A gentleman who had been facing away from the viewer seemed to have turned his head a fraction, exposing half a face with no features.
The paintings were alive.
The thought sent a chill crawling up the back of his neck.
He could not keep staring at the paintings.
On instinct he began to think of other things, trying to redirect his attention.
He recalled that Rule Four was: [After ten o’clock at night, do not wander the corridors freely.]
It was just past seven.
Nearly three hours remained until ten.
He had no idea how long this uncanny dinner would last, nor where they were supposed to go once it ended.
Would the maid arrange rooms for them?
Or would they have to find a safe room to hide in on their own before ten o’clock?
Countless questions circled in Shido Makoto’s mind.
And then, just as he was deep in thought — something changed.
One of the puppet-people seated across from him — a middle-aged man with a thin moustache — suddenly stopped cutting his steak.
He raised his head slowly.
Those vacant eyes seemed to lock directly onto Shido Makoto.
Then, gradually, the corners of his mouth pulled back, stretching into a grin that was grotesque beyond all reason.
The next instant, he raised the dining knife in his hand slowly above his head.
Not good.
Every hair on Shido Makoto’s body stood on end in an instant; his muscles seized tight.
Almost from the most primitive biological instinct, his body acted before his brain could issue any command.
He wrenched himself backward, his entire upper body falling flat, trying to throw himself clear of the lethal blow.
The chair beneath him was carried by the force, its two rear legs dragging backward across the floor.
“Scrreeee—”
The chair legs ground against the floor, releasing a piercing screech.
Shido Makoto’s heart came almost to a complete stop.
But the anticipated attack never came.
The puppet-man, knife still raised above his head, held that same position — wearing that same grin of triumphant malice — and simply watched him.
It had never intended to attack at all.
It had feinted — lured Shido Makoto into dodging, into making noise.
It was a trap.
A trap aimed at Rule One.
Shido Makoto realised he had been played, but it was already too late.
Almost simultaneously with the noise, he felt the temperature of the air around him plummet.
The candle flames on the dining table began to flicker wildly, stretching and writhing.
The paintings on the walls came fully to life.
Every figure within them — noble or servant alike — turned their heads toward him.
Those faces, some with features and some without, each broke into the same grotesque grin worn by the puppet-people.
At the same moment, the puppet-people who had still been mechanically eating at the dining table began, one by one, to stop.
Their bodies began to emit the same cracking, bone-snapping sounds as Wrench had made before his death, twisting and contorting into inhuman shapes.
Necks wrung into spirals.
Arms bent backward and broken.
Sternums tearing through skin.
A procession of horrors played out before Shido Makoto’s eyes.
Yet very quickly he noticed something even stranger.
Shirogane Kei, the programmer, the painter, and Xiao Hui — the four people seated beside him — none of them were looking at the puppet-people contorting all around them.
Every one of them was staring at him with wide, terror-filled eyes.
Why are they looking at me?
What’s wrong with me?
A sense of dark foreboding rose in Shido Makoto’s chest.
Instinctively, he looked down at his own body.
And then he understood.
At some point he could not determine, his arm had twisted into a spiral.
Bone-spurs had punched through the fabric of his sleeve at the elbow, exposed to the open air.
His chest had caved inward.
His legs were folded outward at a grotesque angle.
His body had already been consumed — had already been transformed — without him ever being aware of it.
‘So I was already done for…’
That was the last thought in Shido Makoto’s mind before consciousness collapsed entirely into darkness.