Chapter 7
I carried the doll I’d taken out of the iron cage as I made my way between the red doors.
I was afraid the bats clinging to the ceiling might swoop down at me.
I mean, aren’t bats supposed to carry tons of germs?
I’d even read a news story about someone who collided with a flying bat, got kissed by it, and died of sepsis a few days later.
‘Please, just stay put….’
I silently prayed to the bats and focused on finding the altar.
The rule was to offer this doll at the altar if the basement entrance was open after 10 p.m.
As I looked around for it, something seemed a little strange.
‘Was this building really this big?’
This bizarre basement was easily as wide as a sports field.
The building above was only the size of a small shopping plaza, so the difference was obviously strange.
With junk piled haphazardly around like walls, it was nothing but a maze.
“Bori-bori, do you know a spell that can help us find our way?”
Trying to shake off the tension clinging to me like humidity, I asked Bori-bori half jokingly, half seriously.
Bori-bori, following behind me, still didn’t answer.
Over the past few days, I’d noticed something.
Bori-bori didn’t seem to understand what I said.
Of course, that was just my baseless guess.
Maybe Bori-bori understood me and was deliberately ignoring me.
If that were true, how demonic would that be?
So I decided to assume they ‘didn’t understand me’….
It suddenly struck me that I knew almost nothing about ‘Bori-bori.’
What were they really?
Why couldn’t anyone else see them?
Where had they lived, and what had they been doing?
Why were they so attached to that filthy padded jacket?
I was wandering around, thinking about all that, when—
“Aaaah!”
Someone screamed from beyond the dark corridor.
Then, with rapid pattering footsteps, they came rushing toward me.
Just as I started to think the footsteps sounded strange, a woman came into view, shouting wildly at me.
“People! P-please help me! Help me!”
When something completely unexpected happens, people tend to freeze for a few seconds.
That was exactly what happened to me. I was flustered.
“Security guard! Help me! Get me out! Get me oooooout!!!”
That snapped me back to my senses.
The sheer nerve of calling a twenty-five-year-old ‘mister.’
There weren’t many people in the world who’d do that.
Wasn’t she one of the women who’d been with Jang Geun-beom earlier?
Now that I looked, her hair was a vivid pink.
Hair like that was hard to forget once you’d seen it.
“What happened? What’s going on?”
I took a closer look at her.
She was barefoot, and her top had apparently been ripped off, leaving her in nothing but a bra.
In a word, she looked like the heroine who’d just barely escaped a chainsaw killer.
As I tried to shove that thought deep down my throat, the woman spoke.
“J-just promise you’ll get me out of here. Please…. My name is Kim I-ryeong, and I live in Cheongdo-dong. I’m twenty…. I’m not a suspicious person!”
She was introducing herself without even being asked.
Maybe she was afraid that if I thought she was ‘suspicious,’ I wouldn’t help her or might leave her here.
Kim I-ryeong’s eyes stayed fixed on my ‘security vest,’ as if nailed to it.
She seemed to be in a desperate situation, but I guess a uniform did have a way of making someone feel safe.
“…There’s something here. I don’t know what it is, but there’s something here. Don’t ask me what it is. Aaah… I don’t even want to imagine it! They must all be dead!”
At a glance, she didn’t seem to be in her right mind.
Still, certain words drove into my mind like needles.
“If they’re all dead… did Jang Geun-beom and the other woman from earlier come in here, too?”
“……”
Kim I-ryeong clamped her mouth shut.
At that moment, unease and bewilderment spread through my chest like ink.
Someone dying while I was working a security gig—
Wasn’t that way too big an incident for me to deal with?
Yet unlike my chest, which was growing hot, my head was cold as if submerged in ice water.
Even I was surprised by how calm I could be.
And what came to mind was—
“Did you happen to see an altar?”
The Dori Building Security Rulebook.
No matter what happened, I had to follow what was written in it first.
I had to place this doll on the altar.
Could Ms. I-ryeong know where the altar was?
“…The altar.”
In fact, Ms. I-ryeong’s eyes changed, as if she knew something.
But only for a moment—
“No! I’m not going back there! Let’s just get out of here!”
The force with which she grabbed my security vest and shook me was stronger than I’d expected.
Was this that thing where people could use twice their normal strength in a crisis?
Her grip was startling, but it seemed clear she knew where the altar was.
“Ms. I-ryeong, please just show me where the altar is. I can’t explain why, but I absolutely have to put this doll there.”
“…C-could this be because of the rules?”
“Huh?”
I hadn’t expected the word ‘rules’ to come out of Ms. I-ryeong’s mouth, so I echoed it.
Maybe she thought she’d feel better if she kept talking, because her lips started moving quickly.
“Nikon told me. He said there was a rulebook! That we had to do what it said if we wanted to survive!”
Who the hell was Nikon?
The more she explained, the more questions I had.
It reminded me of when I first got hired at the restaurant.
# # #
“So, to sum it up, this is what happened?”
‘Nikon’ is a horror-story MeTuber.
He was on security duty at this building and disappeared.
Jang Geun-beom and Ms. I-ryeong’s group came here to chase that lead.
Then something attacked them in the basement.
“You don’t know what attacked you?”
“I-I don’t know. I’ve always had a good intuition, ever since I was little. I can tell at a glance whether someone likes me or hates me…. Whether something’s dangerous or not….”
Apparently, Ms. I-ryeong had started her MeTube career as the ‘College Student Shaman.’
Pretty woman. Horror stories. Shaman.
The three things went together so well that she’d hit 50,000 subscribers in less than six months.
“I don’t know what it was, but it was dangerous. I could only think about running away….”
The dangerous thing that existed in this basement.
Could it be ‘Wagi-jagi’?
Based on the information I had right now, that was the best guess I could make.
“The altar’s over there….”
After we’d walked for a while, Ms. I-ryeong pointed at something.
Following the tip of her index finger with my gaze, I saw a stone structure beneath the red doors, built from broad slabs of stone stacked on top of one another.
On top of the flat slabs, a white plate reflected the lantern light.
“…Mister, if we put the doll on the altar, we can get out, right?”
“I hope so.”
I placed the doll on the white plate.
Clack-.
What was going to happen now?
Thump, thump─.
My heart was pounding.
Ms. I-ryeong, pressed tight against my side, also looked around with eyes full of anticipation.
But even after some time passed, nothing in particular changed.
I felt a little sheepish for having expected some dramatic change.
“We can get out of here now, right!?”
Ms. I-ryeong shuddered.
Her voice was hysterical with fear.
I wasn’t sure what to make of it, so I took out the rulebook and read it again.
*3. No entry to the basement*
*After 10:00 p.m., fully secure all basement entrances and increase patrols. If the basement door is found open, offer the sacrifice at the altar below.*
*3-1. How to manage sacrifices*
*An ample supply of sacrifices is stored inside the basement.*
*4. Survival tips for an encounter with Lord Wagijagi in the basement*
*Remove anything bearing your name.*
*If you make eye contact, say “Komori.”*
*If you encounter a body part such as a leg or arm, offer the clothing covering that part.*
*5.━─━─━───.*
*Odd numbers must become even, and even numbers must become odd.*
*Lord Wagijagi, Wagi-wagi-jagi-jagi─.*
I realized something.
─If the basement entrance is open, find the altar and offer a sacrifice─.
That was definitely what it said, but.
Nowhere did it say, ‘You’ll be able to escape by doing that.’
That was the moment I sensed malice in the rulebook.
When I saw the basement entrance gaping open between the bushes earlier, I’d thought of a fish’s mouth.
Maybe my ominous intuition had been right.
It was a mouth.
And mouths usually open when they’re hungry.
To close a hungry mouth, you have to shove food into it.
A creature that swallows its food and feels full will naturally close its mouth.
‘No way….’
Getting people to enter the basement to offer a doll at the altar.
What if that act itself had been ‘feeding it’ all along?
If so, that explained what Ms. I-ryeong had said: the entrance had closed the moment they went inside.
The creature had shut its mouth once it was full.
The prey that had entered was left with no way back out.
‘Were these rules designed from the outset without the reader’s survival in mind?’
Thud-.
Just then, Ms. I-ryeong collapsed as if her fuse had blown.
“…So we really are all going to die here, aren’t we? Nikon said it, too. The four rules written there are just bait to lure in food.”
“Bait?”
“It’s just like swapping out a part in a broken machine… They shove people like us inside and use us as sacrifices! They put those rules there on purpose so we’d die! Ha… fuck….”
Nikon.
Apparently, that man whose face I didn’t know had been able to read these unusual rules, too.
He’d reached a conclusion similar to mine.
That these rules hadn’t been made with the ‘Dori Building security guard’ surviving in mind.
But… was that really true?
Would they hire a security guard and hand over a rulebook like this just to send people into the basement?
Rules were generally meant to protect people and keep them safe.
Thinking from that basic premise, it felt like some crucial screw was missing.
If there really were no way for us to get out of here, there’d be no reason to call it an entrance/exit.
After all, the term also includes 出, meaning ‘to go out.’
“Ms. I-ryeong, did Nikon say there were four rules?”
“I don’t know. That’s what he said. As far as I can tell, there are only two. Though something about it does feel a little off.”
Ms. I-ryeong sighed as she looked at the open rulebook.
“That bastard Nikon was trapped here and went crazy, so he was talking nonsense.”
No, I didn’t think he was talking nonsense.
My mind started turning again.
Nikon had said there were four rules.
But Ms. I-ryeong could only see two written there.
Then what about me?
*5.━─━─━───.*
*Odd numbers must become even, and even numbers must become odd.*
*Lord Wagijagi, Wagi-wagi-jagi-jagi─.*
I could see as far as the fifth rule.
Could there be a difference in which rules each person could see?
It was entirely possible.
After all, here,
I was the only one who could see ‘Bori-bori.’
Only me.
I was the only one who could see this fifth rule.
When I reached that conclusion, I thought I understood what this ‘fifth rule’ was.
This was the way out.
The key to survival.
Jingle, jingle─.
I heard the sound of bells from somewhere in the distant darkness.
At that moment, Ms. I-ryeong’s eyes widened as if they were about to roll back, and she panicked.
“I-it’s coming! It’s coming! Aaah! You son of a bitch! Yeah, come on! Bring it!”
Fear had pushed Ms. I-ryeong to the brink, and now she was bristling with defiance.
I never knew someone facing death could become that brave.
Rather than being intimidated, I felt like I might catch her feverish rage myself.
Crinkle─.
Then Bori-bori, who’d been lazily yawning the whole time despite the situation, furrowed their brow sharply.
“Zil lekh-! Puk-!”
I couldn’t understand the language.
But I could read the blatant hostility in their tail, which had shot straight up.
Jingle….
Soon, the clear ringing of the bells in the distance slowly came to a stop.
Then the sound grew fainter and fainter, as if it were turning back toward the darkness.
By the time everything had gone completely quiet.
“…I-I think it ran away because I cursed at it!”
Ms. I-ryeong, who’d forgotten even to breathe, was exhausted but delighted.
There were plenty of things I wanted to say, but explaining them was a hassle, and there wasn’t time.
“Ms. I-ryeong, I’ll get you out of here, so stop calling me mister now.”
“…Huh?”
Got it. The key to the rules!
How to escape this basement!