However, before her warning could turn into a detailed explanation, Park Dongju grabbed Sim Seowoo’s arm and pulled. Not understanding why he had suddenly stopped in front of the door, he yanked him forward.
The moment they stepped into the elevator, thud — the call dropped. The signal had been cut off faster than one would expect, and it was too strange a situation to chalk up to anything ordinary.
While Sim Seowoo looked down at his phone, which wouldn’t turn back on, his friends frantically pressed the door-close button before belatedly noticing something was off.
Park Dongju, having checked the numbers at the top, muttered in a trembling voice.
“What. Why does it say 4th floor here?”
“T-the screening room is on the 3rd floor. And this building doesn’t even have a 4th floor…….”
So Dahyeon stammered in confusion, and right after, Yang Gayeong let out a scream.
“The ghosts are all laughing!”
Through the gap of the closing doors, the ghosts in the hallway could be seen grinning with their mouths ripped wide open. As though they had been waiting for humans to step inside, dozens of ghosts staring at the elevator and cackling was a sight that chilled them to the bone.
They had fallen into a trap.
“Ooaagh, there’s that pitch-black thing in the mirror again!”
Next, his friends noticed the pitch-black evil spirit filling the elevator mirror and recoiled in horror. The thing that hadn’t been visible since they’d spotted it in the restroom had now appeared in this mirror.
It was as though they had willingly walked into the mouth of the evil spirit. They pressed the open button with enough force to break it, but it didn’t work — and just as the door finally shut and the entire space began to jolt and shudder.
Thud.
“The door…… can’t we just grab it?”
Sim Seowoo slid his hand into the gap of the door and reacted with mild bewilderment.
Isn’t it faster to use your body than press buttons when you’re in a rush? If so, the elevator’s sensor would activate and the door would stop closing and open back up.
Screech, squeal——
However, the elevator’s sensor seemed to have malfunctioned, and the door didn’t open smoothly. But it also didn’t fully shut after Sim Seowoo had slid his hand in, so he simply grabbed the door and pried it open on both sides.
His friends exchanged bewildered glances at the sight of the door flying open.
“……What? That was all it took?”
“How did you even think to put your hand there…….”
Park Dongju was impressed that such a simple solution had existed, but Yang Gayeong was stunned by Sim Seowoo actually grabbing the elevator door himself. After realizing they’d stepped into the evil spirit’s mouth, none of them could bring themselves to touch anything in here.
In any case, the conclusion was that all four of them were back in the hallway.
They found themselves face to face with the ghosts on the other side of the corridor, but strangely, it wasn’t as frightening as before. It was partly because the ghosts themselves seemed quite flustered, and that was noticeable.
It was something like the awkwardness of having said their goodbyes and parted ways, only to immediately run into each other again.
[……Why did you come out?]
[That human, what is he?]
[W-we can’t get any closer…….]
While the ghosts muttered amongst themselves, the four of them held a brief discussion.
Sim Seowoo tried to call Do Seonhwa again, but his phone wouldn’t turn on at all. Considering the over ten missed calls from before, the fact that he’d been able to talk to her just moments ago really did seem like a stroke of sheer luck.
For now, based on the judgment that getting back into the elevator — a narrow, enclosed space — would be dangerous, he looked around.
“I think we should move to the stairwell. The one without mirrors.”
“Ugh, shouldn’t there be stairs right next to the elevator? Why is there only a wall here?!”
“The other stairwell is on the other side, but right now we can’t exactly get there…….”
The stairwell was on the opposite end, but getting there was out of the question with the ghosts filling the hallway. There was no other route to go around, either.
Sim Seowoo looked down at his bag.
“……Just a moment ago, it felt like this doll pushed the ghosts back.”
He proposed, taking into account that after the black puppy doll on his bag had erupted in blue sparks and sent the ghosts sprawling, no ghost had been able to get close to him since — though he had no idea why.
“What if we just try walking that way?”
“What?! The hallway is completely blocked — how are we supposed to……!”
“If they don’t want to touch the doll, maybe they’ll clear a path. Or we could just push through while keeping a standoff all the way to the stairwell…….”
Everyone recoiled at Sim Seowoo’s words. It was shocking enough that he was suggesting walking into a hallway swarming with ghosts, but the method itself was absurdly bold. How on earth could anyone come up with the idea of simply walking forward like a battle of wills?
“W-what if it only works once?!”
“Staying here won’t get us anywhere either, so…….”
Even in the face of Park Dongju’s anxiety about being surrounded, Sim Seowoo remained unfazed. His attitude was that since the back was blocked by the elevator and the front was ghosts, and the back being impassable was certain, there was nothing to do but move forward.
So Dahyeon spoke up in an emotional tone.
“I’m genuinely close to tears at how calm Maeng still is right now. I’m just… really grateful.”
They often teased him, saying ‘a high degree of being slow on the uptake is closely tied to composure,’ but right now she wanted to bow in gratitude for that very quality of his. The absurdity of it all had eased the tension, and on top of that, it was reassuring.
“Can we really call this being calm…….”
Yang Gayeong looked at Sim Seowoo with confused eyes. She too felt a sense of relief thanks to his composure in this situation, but suddenly she felt something was off about him. It was a dissonance she had felt here and there before, but now it hit her with full force.
Sim Seowoo seemed like someone who was broken in some way.
It wasn’t so much that he wasn’t afraid of ghosts — he looked more like someone who had simply accepted that if things went wrong and he died, then so be it. His calm demeanor felt, at a glance, almost like resignation.
“I’m not sure how it’ll go, so let me go first. You three, wait and see how it plays out.”
And true to form, Sim Seowoo stepped forward without a second thought. The three of them hesitated, unable to bear the thought of letting him go alone, and were just beginning to trail after him when —
[Ahaha. Hyung is truly something else.]
The boy Sim Seowoo had first encountered in the restroom walked out of the elevator. Everyone flinched and turned their heads at the sound from behind.
The sight of yet another presence emerging from a space that had clearly only contained the four of them was deeply unsettling.
[All the other humans were gripped with fear, but not Hyung. I thought if I made things even scarier, Hyung would finally cower and tremble…….]
The boy shook his head side to side.
The evil spirit had deliberately provoked Sim Seowoo in order to feed on his fear. For ghosts, the fear of humans was excellent nourishment — a delightful delicacy. Because the duller the human, the more entertaining it was to watch them tremble in terror, he had gone to great lengths to craft a special stage — and yet, to the end, he had remained unchanged.
It was from that unwavering attitude that the evil spirit arrived at the truth.
[So Hyung wasn’t afraid of ghosts from the start?]
Of course, being unable to properly see his own form was likely the reason he could remain so at ease. But still.
The evil spirit now felt a genuine curiosity toward Sim Seowoo. He wanted to provoke that human in some way — the one who was strangely immune to fear. And the evil spirit’s desire to make the living writhe in agony became more than enough fuel to conjure up a new scheme.
Thud — the evil spirit tilted his head to the side and laughed.
[Then your fear must lie within your own heart.]
“……Within my heart?”
[Yeah. A moment ago, when Hyung entered my space, I caught a glimpse of some of Hyung’s memories.]
The elevator had been a fabricated space created by the evil spirit. It would have been even better had he been able to fully trap them within his domain, but as a consolation, he had sought to dig into the traces left by the humans who had briefly lingered there.
[Hyung seems to have a rather interesting past, doesn’t he? I think I’ll take a look.]
A hairline crack spread across Sim Seowoo’s face.
The expression that had remained largely unchanged even while being chased by ghosts went rigid. The mere words that his memories had been peeked at caused him to react as though he had sensed something, and his friends were genuinely startled.
They had never seen an expression like this on him before. Sim Seowoo had always been even-keeled, never paying much attention to anything, carrying himself as though he had reached a state of complete detachment.
And yet that very Sim Seowoo had just taken a step back — not just that, but extended his arm as though shielding a child, pushing his friends behind him, when —
Whoooosh!
A searing red flame erupted in the hallway. While his friends recoiled in horror at the crimson force climbing the walls in roaring blaze, the evil spirit cackled.
[Woah, Hyung! You nearly died trapped in a fire once, didn’t you? Hahahaha!]
The darker the negative emotions latent within a human, the more powerfully it could be wielded. The evil spirit’s voice rose, as though it had stumbled upon an unexpected windfall.
Sim Seowoo let out a breath and bowed his head, burying his face in his hands. From the very moment the flames erupted, a searing pain had shot through his eyes, and he covered them with his palms as though shielding them — before quietly murmuring.
“……Ah. This is a bit, isn’t it. That’s crossing a line.”
