Chapter 17
The moment I read the rulebook, one thought crossed my mind.
"Ah, fuck."
It was fucked.
Unlike the security guard's rulebook, though, I couldn't see any contradictions. It was exactly the kind of textbook rulebook you'd expect. Yeah. If you're going to write a rulebook, then for the love of God, write it like this.
But what the hell are these grotesque clauses?
"..."
I have to fill the black box myself...?
With the patients in the ward?
And on top of that, it's saying to eat it because there's no food. It even says to swallow the hospital's suspicious medicine without making a fuss.
It's horrifying, but at a glance it actually seems doable. I mean, I'm not going to subdue the hospital with a single knife like Chief Lee Do-hyung or anything.
This comeback hero, Kim Geunhong, not only single-handedly obliterated vampires, but also beat the hell out of those terrifying Bureau bastards all the way up to department-head level. On top of that, he even worked as a guard at a hospital and won the Best Security Guard Award.
If it's to survive.
I can do any revolting thing.
But it won't be easy. There must have been a reason Mr. Kim Seonghan tried to stop me. On the rules alone it looks fine, but there has to be something difficult about it.
I read the rulebook over and over, memorizing it with a nervous heart.
But then.
"Huh?"
[4. Except when carrying out Rule 6, do not leave the ward carelessly. A security guard will often appear, and he will take you to a terrible place. Begging him to save you is not recommended.]
Wait a second.
This.
"..."
A memory flashed through my mind.
"H-hey! Please! Please, save me! Please!"
The one I had encountered during box collection duty.
An abnormality.
A patient who had appeared as a frightened human being, begging me for help and asking me to save them.
"N-no way."
No way.
Was that person really a human?
Then the person I had trapped in this hospital... someone with no ties to me.
An ordinary civilian in a situation similar to mine, shoved into the black room at the end of the hallway?
"U, ugh."
A powerful sense of guilt surged up.
My stomach started churning, and a wave of nausea rose. When I forced it down, my hands started trembling, and my heart pounded so fast I felt dizzy.
With my own hands... I did that to a person...?
No, no!
I really didn't know anything!
I just followed the rules! Besides, there was no way of knowing whether that was really a person! There's no way I sent a person to their death!
I tried to drive away the stray thoughts with that line of reasoning, but it didn't work.
What if that person really had been kidnapped into this hospital?
What if they couldn't find the rulebook, got scared because they didn't know what was going on, stepped out of the ward, and then happened to run into me while I was working as a guard and begged for help?
What if I had personally "soothed" that person and put them into the black room?
"Ugh...!"
Fuck...!
Fuck, fuck!
This fucking hospital!
Was this what Mr. Kim Seonghan meant when he said the guard and the patient are different, so never ever let them meet?! I have no idea what's going on...!
ㅡTremble, tremble, tremble.
My body and my mind were both shaking.
The thought that I'd done something terribly wrong made me shudder.
But I couldn't just keep shaking.
I had to survive.
For the sake of the person I hurt, too.
"Mr. Kim Seonghan."
I gently rubbed the ring Mr. Kim Seonghan had slipped onto my finger. Is this a wedding ring? Whatever it is, I have to survive and get it to Daeseong St. Mary's Hospital.
Refresh.
I cleared my head and focused on survival.
First, I had already proven that I could somehow manage the rule about not leaving the ward. It says I can't run into the nurses, but in any case there probably won't be much reason for me to go out any farther.
Let's survive by the rules.
Let's see, it said that if a black box appears in the ward, I have to fill it myself. There are currently two other patients here, so... if one appears, I should be able to deal with it. It's not something I need to do right now.
And if a nurse comes in and tries to make me take medicine, I have to swallow it without hesitation.
I can definitely do that.
I put the rulebook in the drawer and climbed onto my bed, leaning back against it.
After taking a few deep breaths, I could feel that I was hungry and thirsty.
...This was definitely a crisis.
The only things I can eat here are the other patients. If I fill the black box, food will appear, but otherwise there's no real way. But can I kill a patient even without a black box? The rules don't say anything about that.
"..."
"..."
When I lifted my head, both of them were looking at me.
Those monsters with their eyes and mouths sewn shut. I could probably kill those bastards, but eating them would be truly disgusting.
For now, I'll endure.
There aren't any particularly dangerous issues, so it would be better to sleep and minimize any drain on my strength.
I closed my eyes.
* * *
ㅡRustle rustle.
I opened my eyes at the sound of something shuffling around.
Was the nurse here?
As soon as that thought crossed my mind, tension bubbled up in me.
But it didn't seem like she'd come in yet.
The sound had come from the other two patients.
"..."
"..."
Those bastards were crawling around like crazy. No, I can't even call it crazy. They were moving slowly and sluggishly, like snails.
From the one half-hanging off the bed to the one acting as if it had fallen out of a drawer, they all looked deeply grotesque.
Why were they moving when they'd been staying still all this time?
ㅡClick-clack.
Right after that, I heard the sound of shoes from outside.
A nurse?
Could they have twisted their bodies because they knew the nurse was coming?
Because they thought the nurse was going to do something horrible?
While I was still unable to decide whether to imitate them or not, the door opened.
ㅡCreak!
It was the nurse who came in.
As expected, it was an entity with its eyes and mouth sewn shut.
She looked like one of the nurses from Silent Hill.
The nurse looked around the ward. I had my head slightly bowed so I wouldn't meet her eyes. Beneath her fishnet stockings, red high heels came into view. The patients crawling on the floor moved even more violently.
And then.
The nurse walked with disciplined steps and went over to the patient who was crawling.
Then she lifted them up with one hand and set them on the bed.
ㅡSquelch!
Suddenly, she shoved her hand into her own stomach...!
ㅡSwish-swish.
She rummaged around in there with her hand. Knowing the pain behind it made it all the more disgusting. But no blood flowed. With a wet squelch, when the nurse pulled her hand back out, there was a bizarre and horrifying lump of flesh pulsing like a heart in her hand.
It was a lump of flesh the size of a Korean melon.
ㅡGrip!
The nurse grabbed the patient's jaw and pried the mouth open. The stitches holding the mouth shut stretched... No way?
She was trying to feed them that?!
ㅡThwack!
The nurse.
As I expected, she shoved the flesh lump into the patient's mouth.
The patient thrashed.
Even so, she showed no mercy, shoving it all in and forcing the patient's jaw to move so they would swallow the lump of flesh.
I felt despair, as if my soul were evaporating from my body.
Because I realized it instinctively.
That the bizarre lump of flesh was the medicine the rulebook had been talking about.
ㅡSlump.
The patient went limp. The other one was crawling even more frantically, trying to escape the ward. The nurse grabbed the back of their neck, laid them on the bed, and repeated the same thing.
"..."
And then it was my turn.
The nurse stood beside my bed.
ㅡSquelch!
She shoved her hand into her own stomach again, and after thrashing around for about twenty seconds, she pulled out a pink, Korean-melon-sized lump of flesh with long strands of tissue hanging from it.
She held it out to me.
While looking at me through those sewn-shut eyes.
[5. You are a patient. The nurses will regularly enter the ward. Do not be shaken even if they offer something horrifying. It is medicine, so you must eat it all without showing it.]
[ㄴ 5-1. You must prove that you can take your medicine properly and faithfully. If you refuse the medicine, the hospital will not discharge you.]
If I don't eat this naturally, I can't escape.
A laugh was about to come out.
So this is why he said it was difficult.
Apart from that, my hand had already taken the lump of flesh.
Compared to the pain I'd gone through so far.
Disgust was nothing.
"Ah."
I opened my mouth wide.
Without the slightest hesitation, I put the lump of flesh into my mouth as naturally as I could and took a big bite.
ㅡCrack.
As juices burst out, an unknown liquid streamed down. Munch, munch. I endured the disgust, ignored the taste, and forced myself to chew. I didn't even want to describe what it tasted like.
The nurse was silently watching me.
ㅡMunch munch.
ㅡSmack.
Chew.
Swallow.
I repeated it.
If I threw up here... maybe that would actually be better. Just as I was thinking that, the nurse held something out to me.
It was a bottle of water.
"...?"
I stared blankly, and the nurse tilted her head.
Then she opened the cap and held it out to me again.
Was she telling me to drink it?
Fuck, I have to chug it right now!
I immediately took the bottle and drank fiercely, forcing the unpleasant bits of flesh down my throat with the water. Once I'd finished the entire "medicine" routine, the nurse wrote something on her clipboard and then left, the sound of her heels clicking the whole time.
ㅡClick-clack.
All that remained at the scene was me, limp after eating that horrible medicine, and the two patients.
"Ugh!"
It's disgusting...!
I feel like I'm going to lose my mind from how disgusting it is!
It's so disgusting that those two patients, who shared this exact experience with me, feel like comrades! If we all shove this garbage down to the bitter end together, of course a sense of camaraderie will start to form!
It feels like the lump of flesh inside me is moving around on its own. Is this really okay? Could it be causing serious harm to my body? But the only thing I can trust is the rulebook. Obviously, I don't need to think about anything other than survival right now.
I wanted to scream, but I forced myself to endure it.
Even if I have to swallow this injustice, I'm getting discharged.
* * *
Three days passed after that.
That meant I'd eaten the medicine three more times.
Thankfully, the nurse gave me water, so I didn't get dehydrated. But after going three days without food, I was starting to go crazy. I was insanely hungry. If one more day passed like this, it would be obvious I'd been starving.
I'd look sickly.
Then I'd die.
It was scary just to open my eyes.
I felt like I wanted to stay asleep forever.
"..."
Should I eat the other patients?
But the black box still hasn't appeared yet.
ㅡCreak.
The moment I thought that, I heard some kind of sound, and when I reflexively opened my eyes, I saw a black shape.
A black box had appeared in the middle of the ward.