Chapter 2
Bang, bang—shocks followed along with the sound of banging on the door several times.
Then, a scratching noise—skritch, skritch—against the door was heard.
The door trembled slightly each time the sound occurred, but it wasn't strong enough to make me anxious about it opening.
Heaving trembling breaths, I leaned my back against the restroom door.
I felt a chill rising from where I touched the door.
Fortunately, the number of times the man banged on the door gradually decreased.
Soon, the sound of dragging feet—‘skrrr... skrr...’—was heard as if moving away from the door.
But the bizarre groans the man made continued to be heard.
At the thought that he hadn't left yet, I couldn't bring myself to breathe loudly.
I covered my mouth with my hand and quietly pulled out my phone.
Afraid the strange person outside would lunge again, I remained standing pressed against the door.
At a glance, the man was on the larger side.
If he threw himself with all his might, would I be able to block it this time as well?
I wasn't confident.
The phone was slippery with blood that had flowed down from the back of my hand.
Looking at the screen, it was already time for the interns' presentations to have started.
To think I'm worried about work evaluations even in a situation where an unidentified assailant is standing outside targeting me.
I bit my lip in anxiety.
Moving my trembling hand, I found Deputy Head Jeong Mi-gyeong's number in the contact list.
When I pressed the call button, a faint ‘ring-ring’ dial tone was heard through the speaker.
And the next moment,
BANG!!
The door shook violently once more.
The sudden impact took my breath away.
While I was preoccupied with blocking the door, the phone slipped from my blood-soaked hand.
The phone hit the closed toilet lid, bounced off, struck the partition wall hard, and fell to the floor.
Bang, bang, bang!
Because of the sound of the violent banging on the door, the sound of the phone hitting the floor was barely audible.
I propped one foot against the toilet and blocked the door with all my body weight.
Being pressed so tightly against the door, I felt like my breath was being knocked out of me every time an impact came.
Soon, a small impact—thud—as if he'd lost motivation was felt, and then the ‘grrr-grrr’ sound of boiling phlegm and the sound of dragging feet were heard again.
I waited until the sound grew distant, then quickly leaned down and picked up the phone.
Perhaps due to the impact of the fall, there was a long crack on the screen, but fortunately, it wasn't severe.
Touching the screen to open it, I saw a bright red ‘call declined’ icon.
The back of my neck, soaked in cold sweat, felt a chill.
Moving my hands stiff with tension, I searched the contact list again.
Has the presentation started already?
Then Ye-ra-nim and Hyeon-woo-nim won't be reachable either... who should I call?
Bzzz—
While scrolling down looking for someone to ask for help, the phone in my hand suddenly vibrated and twisted.
Startled, my grip loosened, but this time I managed to catch it before dropping it.
Could he have heard the sound and lunge again from outside?
I held my breath and listened, but perhaps because I was holding it, the vibration sound was quiet, and there was no sign the man outside noticed.
Does he only act like that when he hears loud noises?
How did I suddenly run into such a crazy person inside the office...
Suddenly, the thought occurred to me that if I moved without making a sound, I might be able to evade the man.
But soon, the face I had just seen flashed before my eyes, and my body trembled involuntarily.
I never wanted to face those eyes, which could never be called normal, ever again.
To distract myself from that terror, I opened the screen to check the reason for the vibration.
Above the message icon, the number [1] was displayed.
[Team Leader Jeong Mi-gyeong - Jihyeok-ssi, where are you?]
I quickly moved my fingers to reply to Deputy Head Jeong’s text, when suddenly, the contents of the disaster alert I had received earlier caught my eye beneath that message.
[Suspicious person near Gangnam Station ... blurred focus, staggering gait, continuous groaning, etc.]
I got chills at the familiar description.
This... isn't it talking about that person?
Holding my breath, I pressed my ear against the door.
As I listened as hard as I could, I heard the sounds the man was making outside.
As if he were moving around inside the restroom away from the door, the sound of shoes dragging—‘skritch, skriiiitch’—could be heard from a short distance away.
Judging by the irregular footsteps, it was clear he was staggering.
After taking a deep breath, I covered the speaker with my finger and slowly dialed 112.
A muffled dial tone was heard faintly.
The dial tone continued without breaking.
But in the end, no one answered the call.
After listening to the dial tone for a few minutes, I eventually hung up and let out a sigh.
Is there ever a time when the police don't answer the phone like this?
I can't keep hiding in the restroom like this, though.
Suddenly, I listened to my surroundings.
While I was focused on the phone call, the inside of the restroom seemed to have grown quiet somehow.
But even so, I didn't have the courage to just open the door.
I stepped up onto the toilet and poked only my head slightly over the stall door to check the outside.
The inside of the restroom was empty.
Did I hear the sound of the door opening?
Even after checking the outside, I wasn't completely relieved, so I stood on the toilet for a few minutes like that and watched the situation.
Drip.
The sound of water dripping seemed to urge me on.
Perhaps because I was gripping the top of the door too hard, my fingers throbbed.
At this point, there's really no one here, right?
Could he be hiding somewhere?
No, he didn't seem meticulous enough for that.
I carefully opened the door, stepped out, and tiptoed toward the restroom entrance.
I barely reached the door, reached out a trembling hand, and quietly pushed it.
When the door was halfway open, I heard a familiar groan from behind.
“Grrr... Geu-euuu...”
From the very last stall of the restroom, ‘that man’ walked out, his entire body swaying with dragging steps.
He spat out a strange “gik-gik” sound.
The man, his head tilted at a grotesque angle, looked straight at me.
And then, letting out a shriek, he lunged at me.
At a speed unbelievable for a staggering gait, the man was in front of my eyes in the blink of an eye.
I hurriedly slipped through the gap of the half-open door and immediately pulled the handle to close it.
But the man, regardless of whether the door was closed or not, slammed his body into the glass door with the same momentum he had been running with.
Thud.
Perhaps because he had run from the far end of the restroom, the impact was stronger than before, and my body was pushed back involuntarily.
My feet, with nothing to brace against, slid across the flat hallway floor.
Desperately, I checked the top and bottom of the door to see if there was any way to lock it from the outside.
But as expected, it seemed the lock was only on the inside.
At the top of the glass door, a small keyhole on a smooth stainless steel plate was the only trace of a lock that could be seen from the outside.
At that moment, thick fingers suddenly squeezed through the gap in the door.
Seeing the blood-stained fingers poking through the gap, I reflexively slammed the door shut with all my might in shock.
With a dull thud, the man's fingers were caught in the door.
“Gasp!”
Startled by what I had just done, I let out a scream and grabbed the door handle.
I was about to pull the door open, but I suddenly stopped as a question occurred to me.
Why?
Why is there no reaction?
The man was still making bizarre noises and struggling to reach his fingers, which were caught in the door gap, toward the outside.
However, there was no scream of pain within that sound.
There was also no sign of him trying to pull the struck hand back inside.
While I hesitated, the man's hand finally squeezed through the gap.
Red marks caused by being scraped against the glass door were clear on the back of his hand.
Blood even welled along the wounds where the skin had been peeled off, but the man didn't seem to feel any pain.
What should I do? Should I push the door again?
But if this person gets hurt even more...
In an instant, the image of the back of the man's hand, gouged deep enough for bone to show, appeared vividly in my mind.
Fear rose at that horrific image, and the strength in my arm blocking the door weakened slightly.
The man did not miss that opening.
Before I knew it, the man, who had pulled even his head out past the door, glared at me with dull eyes and let out a shriek.
Encountering those cloudy pupils, my previous terror revived on its own.
I struggled and pushed the door again, but no matter how hard I tried, I could not stop the opponent who was determinedly squeezing through the narrow gap.
How long did I hold out?
Finally, most of the man's upper body made its way out of the door.
The man reached his arm, stained with splotchy red marks from being scraped by the door, toward me.
Fear turned my mind blank.
The next moment, I completely forgot the fact that the thing caught in this door gap was a person.
I put my back against the glass door and pushed with all my might.
I felt a moment of resistance, and then a sound like something breaking followed.
Blood gushed out from the mouth of the man who had been glaring at me.
Dark red blood splattered onto the hallway floor.
Startled by the shocking sight, I backed away, stammering out apologies.
“U-Uh, are you okay? I'm sorry. 119, I'll call 119...”
I pulled the phone from my pocket and dialed the number.
The moment I pressed the second ‘1’, the man pushed open the glass door perfectly fine and stepped out into the hallway.
That is, if you could call it ‘fine’ when he was glaring at me with glistening eyes while blood streamed from his mouth.
From his mouth now came not the sound of boiling phlegm, but a gurgling sound that might come from a clogged water pipe.
Every time the sound occurred, blood that poured out in surges ran down the man's neck and soaked his shirt.
No way.
Is he not even in pain?
How can he walk like that?
My sense of reality faded at the surreal sight.
I stopped my hand that was dialing the number and stared blankly at the man.
Something white was sticking out from the side of his suited body.
I gazed at it intently, and soon realized its identity.
Horrified and seized with terror, I immediately turned around and ran toward the office.
The white object, stained here and there with red blood, was definitely the man's rib.
And the man, with his rib protruding from his body, was chasing after me, continuously vomiting blood.
Am I dreaming right now?
Fitting for the surreal situation, the hallway was strangely quiet.
Arriving at the hallway where the team office was, I hurriedly turned and ran toward the door.
The man, who was running without stopping, tried to change direction to follow me but collapsed as if unable to overcome his speed.
I arrived at the office entrance in a hurry before the man could pick himself up.
I urgently placed my finger on the fingerprint reader next to the door.
[Authenticated.]
A green light came on the reader, and a dry mechanical sound was heard.
The glass door opened at a speed so slow it felt suffocating.
I scrambled into the door.
Looking back, the man, who had gotten up before I knew it, was glaring straight at me and running toward the office.
The glass door closed slowly, at a speed as sluggish as when it had opened.
I had to run away somewhere, right now.
Even while thinking that, my stiffly frozen body would not move as I intended.
From beyond the glass door, the man reached out his hand as if to grab me.
Whether something had gone wrong when he fell, the man's fingers were bent in a strange direction.
I held my breath in tension while staring at that bizarre hand.
And the next moment, thud—the door closed.