I went into the shower room scowling as hard as I could, like the other beings who'd shed their skin, but the expression I'd worked so hard on came undone despite myself.
Coming into the shower room, I get it.
That I am thoroughly f*cked.
The first thing that caught my eye was the door leading to the pool.
There were two doors to the pool, set side by side, and the two were different colors.
As if which door you enter is determined by the color of the swimsuit you were given, one was white and the other was red.
But the problem is....... that an unidentified red liquid keeps flowing out from under the red door, staining the shower room floor red, and that people in red swimsuits are lined up in front of that red door.
As I step into the shower room, their heads turn in unison.
Precisely toward me.
Every one of them looking at me with a face twisted in rage.
I shrank under those stares without meaning to.
I walk to a shower stall trying not to mind them, but their eyes follow me the whole way.
To make matters worse, the way the stalls are laid out, there's nowhere to wash with my body hidden.
I have to wash and change into a swimsuit with all of them staring at me like that.
F*ck....
This situation is already garbage, but there's a separate reason I feel truly f*cked.
And it's this.......
Nobody else is wearing a white swimsuit!
Unlike the red door with its line of people, there's nobody standing in front of the white door!
In this shower room, I'm the only one who got a white swimsuit!
Hold on, isn't this Cops and Robbers?
Aren't there supposed to be more Robbers than Cops?
No matter how I think about it, it makes no sense.
Could the roles be assigned by gender...?
Then why am I a Robber?
.......
Calm down first.
They say even if you fall into a tiger's den, you can get out if you keep your wits about you.
And they say even if the sky collapses, there's a hole to rise out of.......
My anxiety must have peaked; I'm just reeling off useless optimistic proverbs.
This is no time for that.
Change into the swimsuit first.
The Pond Snail said so, after all. No need to worry.
It must have brought me here because it had a plan......?
I turned on the water and, soothing my body and mind as much as I could with the warm water, pulled down the zipper of the swim bag.
Inside were white trunks and a swim cap.
I took out the trunks, and...
'Huh?'
I'd been too frazzled to see it earlier, but under the swimsuit there's a zip bag with basic toiletries.
But among the disposable toiletries, through the clear plastic, I saw something completely unexpected.
An object that doesn't belong in a swim bag at all.
A ballpoint pen.
I glanced back; the people were still watching me.
With my back to those stares, I carefully took out the pen.
Gripping it, I feel the lightness of a cheap plastic body.
A pen with a childish design, the kind sold at a stationery shop outside an elementary school, with waves drawn on the body and a ship sailing over them.
The pen's name is printed vertically over the picture.
< The 'Super' Voyage Ballpoint Pen >
The moment I saw it, the corners of my mouth lifted slightly without my meaning them to.
The first true smile I've made since entering this place.
So was the saying right, that there's a hole to rise out of even when the sky collapses?
On the end of the pen's cap is a small 'compass.'
***
"Team Leader."
Even at Hong Yeon's call, there's no sign of Dae-ho's eyes opening.
She was running down a corridor on a floor she couldn't identify, Dae-ho on her back.
CREAK, CREAK, CREAK.
Every time her foot lands on the wooden floor, the floor screams.
Given the difference in their builds, at a glance it looks like a daughter carrying her father.
But not the slightest strain showed on Hong Yeon's face.
She only checks her surroundings with a blank face and runs where instinct leads her.
Because although she couldn't hear footsteps, a 'guard' was certainly chasing them.
She had opened enough distance, but this particular 'guard' was an individual sighted for the first time here, in All Green Cherville.
When it wasn't clear by what mechanism something moved, avoiding an encounter was the basic rule.
"Team Leader, wake up."
And there was another problem.
Dae-ho had been unable to open his eyes for an unusually long time.
The formal name of the tape measure Dae-ho had used to escape the basement was the 'Interior Construction Tape Measure.'
In the past, four interior contractors went missing simultaneously in the middle of a job.
When a long search failed to turn up the missing men, the Formless Special Division dispatched agents, and they detected the aura of a Ghost Story at the site.
The source of the aura was inside the wall of the neighboring building.
What was found there, along with four bodies embedded in the wall, was that tape measure.
A tool-type Ghost Story derived from the wordplay between the 'sigong (施工)' of interior construction and the 'sigong (時空)' that abbreviates time and space.
The Division had raised its stability as far as possible through special processing, and that was what the tape measure Dae-ho used actually was.
Except that the process of raising its stability had the result of increasing the mental burden on the user, and because of that, users of the tape measure came to lose consciousness temporarily.
Even so, that lasts one or two minutes at most.
But Dae-ho had now been out for over thirty minutes.
Hong Yeon stopped.
Ahead, beyond the darkness of the corridor, she felt the aura of something.
Not yet visible to the naked eye, but felt on the skin.
Someone's gaze, watching this way.
'What should I do?'
She couldn't come to a decision.
Because thinking and deciding had always been her superior's part, not hers.
Her role was simply to move as ordered.
That was when—
BOOM.
A low, heavy sound of unknown origin rang out beyond the darkness of the corridor.
Hong Yeon carefully set Dae-ho down.
She knew what that sound was.
BOOM, BA-BOOM— CRACK!
A janggu.
A rhythm that seems regular and yet is off somewhere.
Hong Yeon steps forward, as if refusing to permit any closer approach.
At her stance, a snickering laugh came from the darkness.
The moment her brows drew slightly together, a small lantern rose in the darkness.
Beneath it, a red ceremonial robe came into view.
And then the man's face, and beside it, floating, a wooden mask resembling a gastropod's shell.
"You were waiting for the entertainer, weren't you?"
It was Gap-o and the Pond Snail.
Gap-o, in the red ceremonial robe, his tied-back hair let loose.
He walks slowly out, beating the janggu slung over his shoulder.
BOOM-BUM—, CRACK. BOOM—, CRACK.
"Been a while, hasn't it, squirt?"
His rhythm grows fiercer.
The whole corridor begins to vibrate with the beat he makes.
***
[One minute remains until the game begins.]
I'm standing in front of the white door.
The side of my head stings.
No, it's more than stinging.
It feels like dozens of fingers jabbing me over and over.
The reason was simple.
Because right beside me, those bastards wearing human husks in front of the red door have been glaring at me this whole time, without a single moment's pause.
F*ck it, there's no need to force a scowl to look like them anymore.
It was all over the moment I became a 'Robber.'
I squared my shoulders, feigning as much composure as I could.
Since it's come to this, I didn't want to look weak for nothing.
Because momentum matters in everything.
I'd have liked to stare those bastards right back.
'But I don't have the guts....'
I focused everything I had on the door in front of me, and then focused harder.
Haa....
The one consolation is that I have the pen, no, the compass!
The Pond Snail said it clearly, didn't it?
Find the compass.
Surely it wouldn't have said that for no reason?
The compass, pen and all, is stashed inside my swim trunks along with the Pond Snail's shell.
I'm dying to know what function the compass has, but those stares left me no chance to check.
The second I'm through that door, I examine the compass properly.
Then... there'll surely be something.
No, there absolutely has to be.
Because otherwise I have no idea how to get through this.
Haa...
But didn't it say one minute until the game starts?
Why is time crawling like this.......?
[10...9...8......]
The countdown has finally begun.
[3...2...1 The game begins!]
—CLACK!
The lock released, and without a second thought I opened the door and went in.
I shut it immediately and locked it.
Without pausing to breathe, I looked around.
Cramped.
A narrow, humid space reminiscent of a bathhouse sauna.
The structure was similar to a sauna, but the difference was that the walls, floor, and ceiling were stone rather than wood.
'So it doesn't connect straight to the pool.'
There are three doors in this narrow space, including the one I came through.
To my left was a white door similar to the one I entered by.
The sky-blue door on the right has a sign reading [Pool Entrance].
Another oddity is the small electronic display mounted above the sky-blue door.
Thinking I'd check the compass first, I hurried to pull the pen from my trunks, but—
CREAK.
The white door on the left opened.
And in came the woman who gave me the flyer.
Her role must be Robber too; she's wearing a white full-body swimsuit.
But she isn't the only one coming in.
Two more came in behind her.
A small-framed woman who looks about my age, her arms covered in small, vivid tattoos, is hunched over and can't lift her head, and a middle-aged woman who looks about my parents' age is less so, but her face is just as frightened.
"We meet again."
She looks remarkably composed even in this situation.
Maybe it's the contrast with the two behind her?
That composure somehow doesn't look natural.
For now I answered, discreetly covering the pen in my trunks with my hand.
"Your role is Robber too, right?"
At my question, she nods.
At the same moment the ceiling speaker sounded.
[The next ten minutes are the Robbers' time. Flee before the Cops come after you!]
Ten minutes....
"What do you think?"
"What?"
The flyer woman looks at me.
No, it's closer to a glare.
Why is she looking at me like that?
"I'm asking, how can we get out of here?"
.......
How would I know that?
There are other people here, so why single me out?
And with eyes that sharp, no less.
She comes slowly closer.
The small-framed woman and the middle-aged woman watch quietly from behind.
She stops in front of me.
"You're a Crow, aren't you?"
She throws out something absurd, out of nowhere.
"......A Crow?"
"No use pretending. I've already figured it out."
She doesn't seem to mean an actual crow, the animal...
And why has she suddenly dropped the polite speech?
"Figured out what...?"
I asked with as much injured innocence as I could, but she kept glaring at me.
What is her problem?