Honestly, he hadn't been thinking much of anything.
"......"
He was already struggling just to look after himself.
Besides, this had been a game. For a full twenty-six years, Hoone had been nothing more than an object of amusement. Even if it now claimed the tragedies here had been real history all along, how deeply could that possibly resonate?
Even if something was felt, it had to be ignored.
"......"
What else could he do?
Yeon-woo was not a god, and right now he was in a position where he could barely fend for himself. So don't be stupid and get swept up in sentiment. He needed to make rational, wise decisions.
He didn't want to look back after everything was over and regret that he should have been more careful.
"......"
And yet, just before the second pursuit began.
Yeon-woo opened and read the materials he'd insisted on bringing.
Yes, it was nothing major. He could spare that much time. To reiterate: he despised his own ignorance and loathed belatedly regretting things already past.
So before the situation spiraled beyond control, Yeon-woo wanted to ask himself in advance.
Can I walk out of here as though nothing happened, knowing all of this?
"......"
...He recalled memories that were not his own.
What reached him first was vivid suffering. Or perhaps it was a record someone had left behind.
The deep resignation of someone who realized they could never return home, to their family's embrace, to an ordinary life. A scream, sinking soundlessly into the abyss of despair.
Stripped of rights as a human, treated as less than a living thing, crushed by the pressure of a cramped gap. Every scrap of exhaled breath was suffocating beyond measure.
No—it would be suffocating.
"......"
It would be suffocating, someone had thought.
"Truly...."
That was, genuinely.
"How unfortunate."
It upset Yeon-woo.
***
Slamming its head.
Clawing with its hands.
"......"
Ah, at last.
"......"
The door opens.
***
"......"
"......"
"......"
BOOOOOM—!!!
"...Coco."
He called, but no response came.
"Coco."
The same again. It should have been clinging to his neck, yet his ears felt stuffed—no sound reached him at all.
"......"
He looked around, and the answer came immediately.
Room 14, collapsing and warping. Dark crimson blood was backflowing through every hole that had once held watching eyes. Between the cracks in the coarse, rough concrete walls, deformed fingers had sprouted.
Yeon-woo let out a breath that was half a scoff.
'And yet they can't even come outside.'
As though begging to be saved—or as though they must kill.
Already cracked and torn beyond repair. Those fingers gnawing at the wall as though eating it alive—gnaw gnaw gnaw gnaw gnaw gnaw gnaw gnaw gnaw gnaw gnaw gnaw gnaw gnaw gnaw gnaw—
Gnaw.
"...Ha...."
His ears stung.
"Coco?"
"Yes!"
He could hear again.
'Calm down.'
He forcibly wiped away the afterimages of experiments and rituals clinging to his mind. He barely shook off the nauseating sensation of his brain being contaminated. This was no time to steep himself in such corruption or sentiment.
Yeon-woo asked his business partner calmly.
"Are you confident you won't fall off?"
"Yes!"
"Splendid."
Grotesque sounds poured into his ears.
The laughter of someone gone mad, the thudding of a skull being smashed against a wall. He desperately wanted to cover his ears but couldn't.
This was a section where listening determined survival.
BOOM—!! RUMBLE!!!
"As you're aware, we're currently being chased."
"Yes!"
"I'd like to pick up speed...."
He wanted to go faster, but.
"...Hmm."
It was impossible. This was the maximum speed Yeon-woo could currently produce.
He was running. Had been, from the moment he'd left the 'final room.' The second pursuit had been forcibly activated the instant he'd secured the elevator button.
'I know the situation is urgent enough to demand more speed, but exceeding the character's system-defined speed will overload my body. My condition is already a wreck, so I need to be even more careful.'
Pushing for more speed could cause his body to scatter into liquid blood entirely.
"In any case, you'd best hang on tight."
"Yes!"
Coco dangled from behind his shoulder. It looked like an upside-down necklace or scarf. The fact that it had no perceptible weight and caused no hindrance was a small mercy.
Yeon-woo sharpened his attention to the incoming sounds.
"......"
CRASH—!!
'The sounds are getting closer.'
Reflecting on the game's specifications, the monster's speed was fractionally faster than the character's maximum. To survive this second pursuit, he had to select nothing but the correct route without a single moment's hesitation.
'Right, so....'
The right path.
"I have them all memorized."
"Yes."
"But now that it's reality, it is rather confusing."
"Eeh?"
"Was this section... pattern 21? No, 94?"
"Eeh?"
"Ah, not this one either."
Yeon-woo veered sharply into the right-hand passage.
'Almost got caught just now.'
The interface map did display an escape route, but it was a trap. Certain paths had collapsed or had monsters lying in ambush, so which route was correct had to be judged independently.
'Right here, then left, then the next one is... ah, this isn't that pattern? Then right... then the stairs....'
First, the red lighting. Correct paths had stable lighting; false paths flickered. But some corridors had no red lighting at all.
That was when listening became necessary. Correct paths were relatively quiet or produced only old mechanical hums. Traps had distorted screams or whispers.
"Not this one either."
"Yes!"
"This is maddening."
Even when both seemed correct, if vibrations could be felt in the air, it was a trap. A fragment of the monster lurked there. Going in meant instant death—this demanded genuine caution.
"Which pattern is this? 55th? 32nd?"
"No!"
"I'm sure now. 73rd."
"Yes!"
"Of course it had to be the longest pattern."
Not welcome news.
'The chaos is unbelievable.'
The ceiling, which had been nothing but darkness, was packed with monitors clustered like insect egg sacs. Each flickering screen replayed the footage from the 'interim manager test' on loop.
Fingers gnawing at the walls,
a floor shuddering and quaking behind him,
monitors splitting with cracked static.
"Hello?"
"No...."
BANG!! BANG BANG BANG—!!
"Not well at all...."
Pleading, reddened gazes and the desperate pounding on iron doors. Through every narrow gap, deformed or crushed body parts forced their way into the corridor.
All to seize one man: Lee Yeon-woo.
"Deeply unpleasant."
Who had designed this hell? He prayed that all of it was nothing more than an elaborately staged performance. A mere attempt to frighten the player—not someone's actual resentment or suffering, preserved.
Please let it not be!
"Haha...!"
A hollow laugh escaped. This wretched world. He was filled with revulsion. He couldn't help but ask himself.
'If this is truly a real situation, is it right for me to just run away like this?'
After all,
'Whatever the reason, I'm currently this hotel's manager—the only person who knows what's happening here.'
The question that had tormented him throughout the journey now stood before its final chance.
The Room 14 event occurred only once. New variables might be found in the realized system, but fundamentally, once Yeon-woo left, Room 14 would be sealed forever.
'Then do all the beings here die? Sleep eternally?'
Or would they be trapped all over again?
Yeon-woo recalled the game's hotel lore and felt like losing his mind.
They had been imprisoned for far too long. Eons upon eons. Surely they craved death as a mercy.
"I truly don't understand... why this is being done to me."
"No?"
"No, I don't understand. I still know nothing."
No clear answer came. Coldly speaking, feeling unnecessary responsibility in this situation was tantamount to volunteering to be an idiot.
And yet he kept weighing the future and the possibilities. Because Yeon-woo had ultimately failed to discard his humanity. And the price of that was his alone to bear.
The responsibility of having decided to live as himself.
"If I recall correctly, the monster driving this event is not classified as a staff member."
"Yes."
"How unfortunate."
This event fell under 'horror elements.' If the hotel system deleted the data upon the event's conclusion, Yeon-woo would have no way to intervene again.
"I'm already struggling just to look after myself, and yet this situation won't stop scrambling my brain."
...That said, the conclusion he'd reached wasn't entirely nonexistent.
"......"
He wasn't sure this was right.
"When this is over, I really need to rest...."
A groan slipped out unbidden.
He couldn't determine whether the alternative that had surfaced in his mind was a path that preserved his humanity—or one that abandoned it entirely. In the end, it came down to which value Yeon-woo weighted more heavily.
"Let me clarify one thing."
"Yes."
"The standard strategy is to toss blood packs along the path. Like Hansel and Gretel. The key is buying time while the pursuing monster absorbs the blood."
"Yes!"
"Of course, it can't be overused."
The more blood the monster absorbed, the stronger and faster it became. It was a last resort for when you'd lost your way. In the current state—with every route memorized—not using them was the correct play.
'Above all, these fresh blood packs are resources I'll desperately need later.'
Yeon-woo eyed the blood packs filling his inventory and narrowed his gaze.
'Should I just run?'
Or.
'Should I gamble?'
...A scoff escaped.
"I'm torn. What do you think?"
"......"
"How unusual to get no response, Coco. Nothing to say?"
"Eeh...."
"That means you can't firmly decide for or against. I understand. The risk and the return are both equally stark."
As confirmed during the first pursuit, the Room 14 monster was weak against contaminated blood but blindly drawn to fresh blood. And Yeon-woo, in the most extreme summary, was himself a living mass of liquid blood.
"If I let myself be consumed, revert to liquid blood, and inversely absorb the monster into my body... I could take it with me even after leaving this event zone."
As long as he didn't run the conversion process, it wouldn't become 'him.' It would simply be held inside the vessel called his body. Once secured, he could take his time in the lab to find a proper way to handle it.
That was the 'alternative' Yeon-woo had devised.
"......"
"......"
"...I'm hardly in a position to call myself sane...."
He'd lost count of how many times he'd voluntarily done something insane.
But the instinct that he must not look away gripped the back of his neck. The gazes and fingers behind the walls were 'phenomena,' but the being pursuing him was different. It felt similar to what he'd sensed from the Monster Guests.
Perhaps, living things.
"......"
...Or perhaps people.
"Ha...."
He was exhausted.
With the urgency of someone cramming a kimbap roll into their mouth on the morning commute, he pulled out a blood pack. He was fortunate to have swept up both the phlebotomy equipment and everything else.
Yeon-woo bit down on the pack. From here on, it was a war of volume. To face this head-on without system support, he needed a full tank first.
'I'd rather act than live the rest of my life carrying this discomfort.'
"No?"
'This wicked cat.'
Yeon-woo ignored it and drank. What an uncouth thing to do. Even at company dinners, drinking to liven the mood, he'd never chugged this hard.
***
Please.
I want to get out.