CLACK, CLACK, CLACK.
Footsteps as even as a metronome cut through the darkness.
I'm climbing the emergency stairs, following them.
I'm dying to get out of this place right now, but.......
What can I do, when the woman who saved me is the one taking me up.......?
A woman who crumples an elevator door like it's nothing, no less.
Soon the door to the twelfth floor comes into view, and the bob-haired woman pushes through it without a moment's hesitation.
I follow her through, and there's the corridor.
CLACK, CLACK, CLACK.
She advances down it without hesitation.
Heading precisely for Unit 1208, where I live.
In that instant, a flood of questions flashes through my head.
She hadn't said a single word the whole way up.
Pressed down by the air around her, we climbed the stairs in absolute silence.
But how does she know where I live?
The footsteps stopped.
I raise my head, and she's looking at me.
Standing exactly in front of the door to Unit 1208.
And she stares at me as if to say, hurry up.
Honestly.......
Really, honestly!
It might be shameless of me, given that I'm the one who got saved!
But that woman terrifies me.
As much as any of the bizarre things that happened to me today!
When I picture her crumpling those elevator doors, my knees go weak, as if it were my body being crumpled.
But in the end I walked toward her.
Because I had no choice.
So let's not suspect her more than I have to!
Anyway.......
She saved me, didn't she?
When I stood in front of the door, she took a step back.
Before entering the passcode, I asked carefully.
"May I ask your name?"
My question must have surprised her; the eyes behind the glasses widened slightly.
After a moment's thought, she spoke.
"It's Hong Yeon."
'Hong Yeon.......'
Hong Yeon...... a red bond, is that what it means?
It's an unusual name for a person.
I quickly bowed my head.
"Thank you for saving me, Miss Hong Yeon."
She bowed back, the gesture awkward.
Even after we'd exchanged greetings, she doesn't leave, only keeps watching me.
"Um...... well then......."
Leaving her and that unnerving stare behind me, I hurriedly punched in the passcode.
The door opened onto a dark interior.
I gave her another small nod and hurried inside.
I closed the door as carefully as I could....... and then collapsed onto the floor.
Haa...... honestly, it still doesn't feel real.
'Maybe all of this is just a dream?'
I come to on the bathroom floor of the bar.
I'd look in the mirror, laugh it off, and probably write it off as a youthful mistake.
Otherwise this situation is.......
Really.......
It really makes no sense.
Maybe it's because the tension drained out of me?
Thirst hit me.
Without even thinking to turn on the light, I headed for the fridge.
The moment I opened the fridge door, the space around me brightened.
And then, at the edge of my vision, I saw something.
A black shape is sitting on the sofa.
Its head begins to turn, slowly.
And then it is looking directly at me.
My heart starts pounding.
I can feel hot blood spreading through my whole body.
Calm down, first.
If I scream....... wouldn't she come to help?
'Could she have been standing outside the door in case of something like this?'
If so, I have to shout before she leaves—
And then the thing on the sofa vanished.
And now, right in front of me, it is standing.
A man.
A man who looks to be in his forties, with a beard grown out rough.
He smooths a hand over his tied-back hair....... and grins at me.
As if he knows every thought in my head.
I tried to shout, but only a strangled choking came out; the cry caught in my throat and wouldn't come.
The man whispered, low.
"It's been a while, Do-yul."
The instant I heard that voice, the strength went out of my body.
And my vision slowly stained black.
And I lost consciousness.
***
I heard a sound.
A dull sound, something being struck over and over.
It brought me around.
My eyelids are heavy.
Once, twice.......
I keep trying, and they slowly begin to open.
A familiar ceiling.
My place.
Twelfth floor of the officetel, Unit 1208.
Right now I'm lying on the living room floor....
The sound is coming from the kitchen.
I barely manage to sit up, and I see the man standing in the kitchen, chopping down at something.
The man who ambushed me a moment ago.
He's hacking away at something with a kitchen knife.
Wearing an apron I've never seen before.......
"You're up?"
"Who are you...?"
My voice cracks badly.
The man snorts a laugh at that.
"Sorry about earlier. It'd be a problem if those Formless Special Division bastards caught me."
The Formless Special Division?
"You still like braised tofu, right?"
The man spoons what he'd been making into a bowl and sets it on the table.
In the bowl is red braised tofu that looks appetizing.
Smelling it stirred something like longing in me.
A feeling of something forgotten being touched.
That feeling frightened me somehow, and before I knew it I was asking him.
"Who are you, in my house....?"
He doesn't answer, only keeps setting the meal out.
Braised tofu, doenjang stew, freshly cooked rice.
A feast of home cooking, unfamiliar to me.
"There! Dig in. Not much of a birthday spread, but still!"
"Birthday? Whose birthday are you.......?"
"Whose?! Yours, Do-yul!"
He comes toward me with a good-natured smile.
He hauls me up and sits me down in a chair at the table.
"Today isn't my birthday......."
"What's a birthday, anyway? A fresh start! Goodbye to the life before! Today you're born again."
"I'm really sorry, but...... who are you?"
At my question, he studies me closely for a moment.
"You really don't remember? It's me, Brother Gap-o! Brother Gap-o!"
"Gap-o...... Brother?"
He shows up looking that shaggy and calls himself my brother?
My reaction must be funny; he laughs and takes a huge spoonful of rice.
He crams his mouth full and keeps talking around it.
"That's right! The guy who beat the drum beside your mom, Sister Chae-ryeong! Remember now?"
"The drum......."
I don't remember at all.
Seeing that I don't, the man called Gap-o turns somewhat serious.
He stares at me hard, then suddenly bursts out laughing.
Chewed grains of rice spray from his mouth and scatter across the table.
"Wow! Sister Chae-ryeong really is something. It's been well over ten years since the rite, and you still don't remember a thing!"
'A rite?'
"Doesn't matter! I only have to do my job."
He takes something from his pocket and sets it on the table.
A wooden box a little larger than a glasses case.
I look at the man with eyes asking what this is.
"It's a birthday present, Do-yul."
The man answers.
"A present......."
"Go on, open it!"
"Like I said before, today isn't my birth......."
At my answer, he opens the wooden box and holds it out in front of me.
Inside was.......
A key.
An utterly ordinary-looking iron key.
"From now on, today will matter more than the day you were actually born."
He watches me, both corners of his mouth raised.
He shakes the box as if urging me to take the key.
"What kind of key is it?"
At my question, his smile thins.
A second ago he was nothing but a playful middle-aged guy, but with the laughter gone he's a completely different person.
"I felt that Hong bitch's aura outside earlier. Something happened today, didn't it?"
'That Hong bitch? Does he mean the woman called Hong Yeon?'
"Something like what......?"
"You know without me saying, don't you? Like, say, suddenly getting trapped in an elevator......."
He goes on, smirking.
"Seeing a corridor of alternating light and dark....... Or running into a monster in a mask!"
He throws a BOO! at me, pretending to startle me.
His face is full of mischief.
"......."
That man knows exactly what happened to me today.
As if he'd watched from beside me.
The more I talk with him, the clearer one thing becomes.
First, that the man is not normal....... and second, that I shouldn't blindly believe what he says.
He wears a good-natured smile, but there's that look that surfaces now and then.
What's in that look when he watches me is unmistakably hostility.
"No need to rack your brain over it. It's only that the time has come."
"The time...... for what?"
SCRAPE.
He drags a chair over and sits down in front of me.
"You've got every right to be confused. I should have come sooner and told you all sorts of things, but those Formless Special Division bastards made it impossible."
"Hold on. Honestly, I don't understand a word of what you're saying."
The man drank water straight from the bottle.
The empty bottle rolled across the floor with a 'CLUNK.'
Only then did he look at me.
"In a word, the Suppression Rite has run out of juice."
"A Suppression Rite......? The kind that blocks a spirit descent......."
He shook his head and tapped the table with his chopsticks.
"The power in your blood! Sister Chae-ryeong handing this officetel over to you means she's about to hit her limit holding it down."
"Hold on, one at a time, slowly. What power? And what does that have to do with this officetel? And why do you keep talking about my dead mother like.......?"
Before I could finish, his face began to tremble, and then he burst out laughing.
"What? Dead? Sister Chae-ryeong? She's alive and perfectly well! Who told you she was dead?"
"Everyone...... they said my mother left me the officetel as an inheritance......."
"I'm asking who said that."
The laughter vanishes from him in an instant as he asks.
The moment I see his face, my mind goes blank.
I can't remember.
'Who told me my mother was dead?'
My uncle? No way.
If that selfish man had known, there's no way he'd have handed the officetel over quietly.
Then who?
Who told me my mother was dead?
And how did I get here?
I don't know. I can't remember at all.
"Can't remember, can you?"
His voice came closer.
His face is right in front of mine before I notice.
He pushes the chair back and stands, then walks past me into the living room.
"Of course you can't remember."
He raised a hand toward empty air.
A faint afterglow rose from his fingertips like cigarette smoke.
"Because nobody told you. You came here on your own two feet."
He stopped at the living room window.
The city lights bleed in through the glass and cover the side of his face.
"This officetel, see, isn't just an officetel."
The moment his hand, holding that faint light, touched the glass, concentric rings spread across the transparent surface.
"Inheriting it means inheriting Sister Chae-ryeong's power."
"Power......."
"Your time has simply come. This boring ordinary life that Sister Chae-ryeong tried to give you, straining and shaving away her own life to do it, it's over now. So it's time you came back where you belong."
"Where I belong? What the hell do you want from me?"
He comes over and looks down at me.
He set the wooden box in front of me again.
"If you want to know, take the key."
What the hell is this key?
The man whispers by my ear.
"And remember one thing."
His voice shakes as if he's holding back rage.
"She isn't dead yet, but with her own hands she carved away the thirty years of life she had left, for you."
What...?
"And all for this worthless, utterly ordinary time you've been enjoying. So it's about time you earned your keep, don't you think?"
"Then say it in a way I can actually understand!"
He laughs and backs off at my shout.
"Do-yul! What on earth is there to agonize over?! It's a present, I'm telling you! A present!"
"Then tell me what the present is!"
"A key, as you can see!"
"What on earth is this key that it's causing all this fuss?!"
He looks at the key.
With the face of a man reunited with a long-missed lover.
"With this key, you can become the master of this officetel."
Master of the officetel?
What the hell is he talking about?
"Why do I...... have to be the...... master?"
"Why?! Becoming the master of this place means......."
"If it's so great, you take it, mister! I don't need it!"
At my words the man froze for an instant.
That expression, different from anything so far.......
He looks genuinely shocked...?
Did I say something wrong?
Suddenly he starts laughing like a madman.
"Ha, your mother's son through and through. You've got her knack for gouging a man's heart open too."
He looks at me without wiping the laughter off his face.
"Do-yul, I'd love to. But they say I can't. Because I wasn't born with that noble, magnificent blood."
He keeps on snickering.
Then the doorbell rings.
"Haa... they've sniffed me out already."
Like an actor stepping off stage, he wipes every trace of laughter from his face and walks into the living room.
Then he takes something from inside his clothes.
A blade.
An old-looking dagger with a blade about a handspan long.
"I've delivered my message! See you around!"
The doorbell rings again.
Someone starts pounding on the front door.
"Leave the key behind when you go with those bastards! They can't get in here anyway!"
He finishes and waves at me.
Then he stabs the dagger into the floor.
The air around him begins to tremble faintly, and a ripple spreads across the floor.
Starting from his feet, the ripple slowly drags his whole body down.
Shoulders, neck, chin...... and at last, when only his head is left, he shouts at me.
"Get the rest of the story from the Pond Snail!"
The instant the shout ends, the floor swallows him whole.
He vanished completely, as if he had never been there at all.
The only proof he'd existed was the food laid out on the table and the wooden box with its unidentified key.
The doorbell rang again.
On the intercom screen, the woman called Hong Yeon and a tall man.
I barely got hold of myself, walked to the front door, and opened it.
"What's the matt.......?"
CLICK.
Cold metal tightens around my wrist.
I look down, and what's locked around my wrist is handcuffs.
Handcuffs etched with bizarre patterns.
'Why the hell handcuffs?'
My head can't keep up with the situation.
What did I do wrong?
I look up without thinking and see the tall man looking down at me with fierce eyes.
'And who is this one now?'