Chapter 84
"Random matching?"
Jung-seok was a coward, but his mind worked incredibly fast. He perfectly understood my messy explanation on his own.
"So you're saying you didn't put us in the corridor today?"
"That's right."
Why are we here? Who else is here besides us?
These were still unknown questions for us. Of course, what we needed to do remained the same.
"Even if there's a new variable in the situation, we still need to get the talisman and escape. Let's take this basement talisman and go to the first floor."
Swish-
I carefully took the talisman attached to the altar. Watching this, Jung-seok kept flinching.
"......"
The reason Jung-seok was so scared was probably because of Gu Hyena.
Gu Hyena kept making sounds like "kirik" or "kihik!" while twitching her joints and shoulders as if doing a popping dance. It was a terrifying sight and must have been too stimulating for the cowardly Jung-seok.
"Hey. When it's just me and him here, you don't have to act like a ghost so much."
I was scared of Gu Hyena's appearance too, so I asked if she could tone it down a bit. Gu Hyena rolled her terrifying eyes and asked back instead.
"What did I do?"
"No, nothing."
Does she not know her own state? Maybe ghosts develop tics without realizing it.
Anyway.
"You guys, do well on your own. I'm going to the first floor now."
Swish swish-
Gu Hyena moved her long hair strangely and disappeared through a hole in the ceiling. Only after every strand of Gu Hyena's hair had disappeared did Jung-seok exhale in relief.
"Wow. That's really scary."
"I know. But it's fortunate that she won't attack us because we found her body. Look at Kwon Suho here. He's dead. He must have stacked two quirks. Is he really dead...?"
Kwon Suho was the first person to stack two quirks. Until now, I had been managing well to prevent people from stacking more than one quirk, even for guys like Kim Gun-ho or Park In-bae who had bullied me terribly.
But Kwon Suho was sucked into this random matching beyond my control and ran towards Gu Hyena beyond my control, dying miserably.
What happened to Kwon Suho after waking up from the dream?
As I was feeling a bit tense and thinking about various possibilities, Jung-seok said,
"Hey. This guy deserves to die. Gu Hyena died because of him. If it weren't for him, things like the Head Ghost wouldn't have existed in the first place."
"Still, a person died."
"Young-won. You don't know, but people who know understand how much trouble Kwon Suho and his gang have caused in Gaeryong. There are more than a few people whose lives were ruined and who wanted to commit suicide because of them."
I didn't know about this, but Jung-seok seemed to feel a kind of satisfaction about Kwon Suho's death.
Originally, Jung-seok's dream was to become a prosecutor who would take down all criminals. From Jung-seok's judgment, Kwon Suho seemed to be an evil person who deserved to die.
"You know how there are people who wonder why ghosts don't take away guys like that? Kwon Suho was exactly that kind of person. He really was taken away by a ghost. And we had expected that someday there would be someone who stacked two quirks, right?"
Jung-seok's words made some sense.
Honestly, I had been feeling an underlying fear. The fear that someone might stack two quirks due to some variable while we're here─
"Now that it's happened, we can use Kwon Suho to find out what happens in reality to someone who stacked two quirks. We should use any situation."
Jung-seok's words were all correct if you think about it coldly. Jung-seok is cold. A cold boy.
"Ha Young-won. You're too soft. As I've said many times, if I had your status window, I would have dealt with all the death row inmates who haven't been executed yet."
Am I too soft? I had never thought about it that way.
But in the end, Jung-seok seemed to be comforting me in his own way. Kwon Suho's death is not your fault─ so let's move forward, he seemed to be saying.
"......"
I looked at Kwon Suho's corpse again and then at the photo I had taken from Kwon Suho's wallet that Gu Hyena had kept.
The Kwon Suho in the photo, holding a cute Shiba Inu, looked far from a villain or a bad person.
"People all have various sides to them."
I headed to the first floor then gave the talisman to Jung-seok.
"You keep it and escape if there's an urgent situation."
"Is it okay to give it to me again? What about you?"
Jung-seok asked me, seeming worried about me but also slightly relieved to have the talisman.
I spoke casually,
"Hey. A leader should lead by example. More importantly, Dahee might be somewhere here. We need to find Dahee. Dahee has paper cranes, you know? They're really amazing."
The paper cranes had the effect of finding altars. Dahee said she would enter this corridor with two of them.
That's right.
Yoo Dahee is someone who falls into this corridor regardless of her own will.
"We probably need to go to the newly opened second floor to escape all of us, right? It's better if Yoo Dahee is there to find the altar."
I thought Yoo Dahee must be somewhere here, so I decided to call out for her loudly.
"Yoo Dahee! Dahee!"
To be honest, I thought it might be awkward to meet Yoo Dahee. To think that the girl trapped in that shed was Yoo Dahee.
But given the situation, it wasn't the time to worry about such things.
"Yoo Dahee!"
"Yoo Dahee!"
Both Jung-seok and I were shouting for Yoo Dahee.
Thump, thump-
Just then, I sensed a presence far away on the first floor. It was a girl holding a lighter flame.
I thought it might be Yoo Dahee, but she was a bit taller and her face was full of annoyance.
"Wow. This is really something. Ha Young-won. You're not looking for me but you're looking so hard for Yoo Dahee?"
It was Yang Juhee! Had Yang Juhee also fallen into this random matching!
"Hey! Yang Juhee! I'm relieved you're here! I'm really glad to see you! Really!"
The second floor was a place full of terrifying ghosts. To navigate such a place, we desperately needed the help of the tough Yang Juhee. But Yang Juhee snorted at me.
"What are you saying? You were just calling for Yoo Dahee until now. You put me in the corridor without saying anything and didn't even call for me. I'm really hurt. Our Young-won has grown up a lot, even ignoring this noona."
"No. Jung-seok, you explain it."
Jung-seok was better at speaking than me. He quickly explained our situation, and Yang Juhee crossed her arms, seemingly not understanding.
"What's going on?"
Actually, Yang Juhee was slow to understand about the status window and the Nightmare Corridor system too.
Maybe it's because she's a popular kid and a bully, so she doesn't play games.
"Hey. You're good at studying, so why can't you understand this kind of story?"
She might be good at studying, but she lacked the sense to understand these things. It probably means there's a difference between the brain for memorizing studies and the brain for understanding and grasping various things.
When I spoke a bit accusingly, Yang Juhee got upset.
"What are you talking about? I've never survived once! That's why I don't know!"
That was true.
As I was nodding in understanding, Yang Juhee looked around.
"Let's get out of here first. And I saw Gu Hyena on the first floor earlier, she was really terrifying. Covered in blood. You say that's Kwon Suho's blood? So that bastard Kwon Suho really died."
Yang Juhee also seemed to feel some satisfaction about Kwon Suho's death. What was Kwon Suho to the residents of Gaeryong City?
Anyway.
We needed to find Yoo Dahee and enter the second floor. But suddenly, I thought there might be a problem even if we find Yoo Dahee.
"Me. Jung-seok. Yoo Dahee. Yang Juhee. That's at least four of us. Basement talisman. First floor talisman. Second floor talisman..."
There are four of us, but the expected number of talismans we can get is three.
"We're screwed. Dahee said before that we could escape through the first floor exit too, right? It looks like this, but it's tightly locked."
Three talismans and a closed exit. What this means is one thing. One person can't get out.
The smart Jung-seok seemed to realize this too, as he gripped the talisman in his hand even tighter.
Is he afraid I'll ask for it back? Worried that Jung-seok might panic, I spoke boldly,
"Hey, I'm not asking for your talisman. You have the best memory and explain things well, so it's better for us if you get out and organize everything."
"Right."
Anyway, we wandered around the first floor corridor looking for Yoo Dahee. It was okay to move around freely because there were no ghosts on the first floor except for Gu Hyena.
"Hey. It feels like we're on a trip. Is it always like this?"
Yang Juhee rummaged around the first floor as if it was her world. Come to think of it, Yang Juhee had never escaped this corridor alive.
It meant she didn't remember the fact that she died, or any of the conversations we had in the corridor.
Today's events could end up the same way. I clenched my fist and said,
"Today, we're all getting out of here alive. For sure."
As we were wandering around the first floor, We found the first floor altar in a space labeled "Multi-purpose Room".
The talisman was well attached.
"It's the second talisman. I thought Dahee would have taken this for sure, but it seems she's not here."
A variable of random matching. Yoo Dahee might not be here─.
I made a mental note of this.
"Oh, doesn't this look useful as a weapon?"
Yang Juhee picked up a baseball bat in the multi-purpose room. Her form as she swung it around looked pretty convincing.
After much deep thought, I spoke as if reaching a conclusion,
"Then let's go to the second floor. Even I don't know much about the second floor, so everyone needs to be mentally prepared."
Just as we were about to go up to the second floor, Gu Hyena was standing at the entrance to the second floor.
The high school girl ghost Gu Hyena, that is.
Squeeze-
Just as I felt Yang Juhee gripping the bat tighter, Gu Hyena spoke to us.
"Going to the second floor?"
"...Yeah. Why? Want to come with us? Will you help us?"
Gu Hyena was a ghost. A ghost ally. Wouldn't that be reassuring, even if scary?
"Since you're a ghost too, couldn't you talk to the ghosts on the second floor and negotiate or something? Can you help us? If you help us, your chances of coming back to life increase too."
I tried to persuade Gu Hyena. But Gu Hyena shook her head.
"I don't want to go up there. It's a completely different world from this first floor. You living people wouldn't understand. And the ghosts up there are... completely different from me...? Something like that."
Ghosts are different? What does that mean?
It didn't seem like she was simply talking about different types. Can ghosts be different?
Gu Hyena glanced at the second floor as if she was scared of something. Then she finally disappeared into the darkness with a swish.
"Ghosts that even ghosts are afraid of, huh."
Yang Juhee casually summed up the situation. But that comment made me and Jung-seok even more scared.
Should we just escape from here? Both Jung-seok and I have talismans, right?
That would mean leaving Yang Juhee here alone... but if she dies and gets a quirk, I could just cure it with the status window from outside.
It was a somewhat rational thought.
But thinking like that made me feel like my motivation was drastically decreasing.
I don't feel inspired to explore the second floor. I thought for a moment and made a decision.
Swish-!
I held out my talisman to Yang Juhee.
"Here. You keep this. If something dangerous happens, tear or burn this to escape."
"Me?"
"Yeah. I'll escape with the second floor talisman. And this time, I really want you to survive. Even if we can cure quirks, we don't know what side effects there might be from constantly dying here."
"Tch, what's this? You were only looking for Yoo Dahee earlier. Why are you pretending to care now? Are you really not going to regret this?"
At Yang Juhee's question, I thought one last time.
"Regret... I won't!"
By giving the talisman to Yang Juhee, I created a reason for myself to explore the second floor.
In other words, it's a do-or-die strategy.
"Then let's go!"
The conquest party's first exploration of the second floor. Let's go!