Chapter 122

When he first heard the voices calling for him from a distance, he was suspicious. He knew Theo or Holanghee wouldn’t just call out for him and Father so openly. However, when the two voices merged into just Theo’s, a seed of doubt began to grow. It didn’t take long for that doubt to turn into certainty.

It was because Theo’s voice was calling him ‘Soo-hyun.’

Why was he calling for him alone? Where were Holanghee and Father? He said he hated ghosts…

With his heart racing, Blaine ran until he was breathless. By the time he pushed through the bushes and barely managed to reach the pond, he heard someone call out “Hyung,” and saw Theo turning toward a massive hand rising from the surface of the water.

For a split second, he wondered what it was, but then the warning about not answering non-human things flashed through his mind. If Theo answered, that giant hand would snatch him away. He just knew it.

Without thinking twice, his body moved first. He clamped his hand over Theo’s mouth to stop the answer and pulled him into his arms. He let the struggling Theo know it was him, checked his condition, and stared warily at the pond. The giant hand that had been about to seize Theo had vanished without a trace.

“There was a hand?”

When Blaine told him what he had seen at the edge of the pond, Theo turned pale and took a couple of steps back while staring at the water.

“Yes, a massive hand. I think it was going to grab you if you answered.”

What would have happened if he had been caught by that hand? The mere thought made his skin crawl. Rubbing his arms as a shudder ran through him, Theo looked at the calm, rippling surface of the water with pure revulsion.

“It should be gone now.”

Blaine spoke gently to reassure him, but Theo merely nodded reluctantly, his eyes still fixed on the pond, unable to shake his anxiety.

“Y-yeah… But didn’t you hear us calling you?”

“Ah… I heard you.”

“Then why didn’t you answer or come sooner?”

“To be honest, I didn’t think it was really you two. I didn’t think you would use such a… crude method to call…”

“…….”

Fine, sorry for being crude.

“D-did you find the exit?”

“Yeah, that’s why we were calling.”

“Ah… and the girls?”

“They took the Bride and went ahead so I could find you.”

“Then let’s hurry before the Bride comes back.”

Blaine naturally reached out his hand, suggesting they hurry, and Theo took it without hesitation.

“Which way is the exit?”

Though he had stepped forward, Blaine didn’t know the way. When he asked, Theo pointed toward the altar.

“Over there, by the altar.”

“Huh? Really?”

“Yeah.”

“If we had looked around the altar more carefully, we wouldn’t have had to go through all this trouble…”

“Exactly.”

The two of them shared a few words as they walked, making sure to keep a distance from the pond’s edge just in case. After walking for a while, they both came to a sudden halt. The surroundings were suspiciously quiet. They couldn’t even hear the wail of the Bride, who should have been busy chasing Father and Holanghee.

It seemed the Bride was no longer pursuing the other two. Theo and Blaine immediately heightened their alertness. If she wasn’t chasing them, there was no telling where she might be prowling. While the area around the pond was wide open and bathed in bright moonlight—making it easy to spot the Bride if she appeared—the same applied to them; they were just as visible to her.

They had to get away from the pond first. After a few hushed words, they moved toward the thicker brush.

Once they entered the dense foliage, Theo felt a pang of regret that only Father had a lantern. Those bastards should have given one to everyone. Relying on the moonlight filtering through the heavy leaves, they picked their way forward until the sound of rustling grass reached them from nearby.

The moment the sound hit their ears, Theo and Blaine froze. Instinctively, they clamped their hands over their own mouths and scanned the area. Though they could hear her, fortunately, nothing was visible yet. The two scrambled to hide beneath the dark shadow of a large tree.

A moment later, the Bride appeared with the sound of crunching footsteps. Trailing her unusually long sleeves that reached down to her toes, she walked slowly but with terrifying certainty. Then, she came to a dead stop right next to the tree where they were hiding.

‘No way,’ Theo thought. He had truly believed she couldn’t possibly know their location since they hadn’t made a sound or shown themselves.

The tension in the air spiked, and a wave of anxiety washed over Theo. Unconsciously, he gripped Blaine’s arm tightly and pressed his body against him. The already small gap between them vanished; Blaine stiffened for an entirely different reason, but his reason quickly scolded him that now was not the time.

The footsteps started up again. But the sound wasn’t moving away—it was getting closer. The Bride seemed to know exactly that they were crouching behind that tree.

Questions flooded their minds, but there was no time to analyze the situation. After taking a deep breath together, they gripped each other’s hands and bolted. Caught off guard by their sudden dash, the Bride shrieked and lunged after them.

Bursting out of the brush, they sprinted along the edge of the pond without looking back. Even without turning around, the shadows cast by the brilliant moonlight told them everything: the Bride was pursuing them with ferocious intensity.

Gasping for air, they spotted the path leading deeper into the garden in the distance. Just a little further. Just a little more. They clung to that sliver of hope, but then, the shadow chasing them from behind suddenly vanished.

Puzzled, they gradually slowed down and looked back, eventually coming to a complete stop. The Bride was gone. They scanned the area to see where she could have disappeared to, but under the radiant moon, only the shadows of Theo and Blaine remained.

“…Where did she go?”

Theo muttered, his voice thick with unease and caution. Blaine shook his head.

“I don’t know.”

Perhaps because the surroundings were so still, the sound of the wind whistling between them felt exceptionally loud. Theo maintained his perimeter watch and tugged on Blaine’s arm.

“Let’s move while we have the chance. I don’t know why she vanished, but she could reappear at any moment.”

Blaine allowed himself to be pulled along, walking backward in a daze. Just as he was trying to regain his composure and steady his stance, the Bride suddenly lunged out from the side bushes and unleashed a wail right at them.

There was no way to dodge, no way to respond. They were exposed to the full force of the ghostly wail. Blasted back by the shock, they tumbled straight into the pond.

With a loud splash, a massive plume of water erupted from the surface. Startled by the sudden plunge, the two instinctively struggled, causing a chaotic swarm of bubbles to cloud their vision.

Suffocating and unable to right themselves while floundering, their bodies began to sink rapidly. Panic set in, making them thrash even more as they craned their necks upward, desperate for the surface and a breath of air.

Through the veil of bubbles obscuring their sight, a night sky as clear as a mirror came into view. It was a sky so tidy and pristine that it was hard to believe they were looking at it from beneath the water. It was like looking into a reflection.

Stunned by the incomprehensible sight, they slowly stopped struggling. The surrounding bubbles began to subside. Then, the Bride slowly walked across that very surface. As if searching for the two who had fallen in, she glanced around and approached, eventually passing directly over their heads.

The sight actually calmed them down. The Bride, passing over the mirror-like surface of the water, was treading upon it with two arms extended from beneath her long sleeves. She was crawling on all fours—two arms and two legs.

After the Bride had completely passed, they surfaced and stared blankly in the direction she had gone before swimming out of the pond.

Coughing up water and collapsing onto the ground in exhaustion, they finally understood why the Bride had been so good at finding them. It was because she wasn’t “Dead”—she was “Rotten.”

Since she had been stepping on the ground every time she appeared, she might as well have been bragging about her location.

In the end, the warning they had first found in the library was a trap. The section about the “Dead” had been erased to incite caution toward them, a fake-out designed to make them mistake the Bride for a “Dead” entity. From the beginning, the Bride had nothing to do with the “Dead.”

The fact that the information on how the “Dead” move had been obscured was also a smokescreen. It was meant to make them focus on the wrong thing, and they had played right into the trap.

“They’re really just playing with us,” Theo spat, gritting his teeth in frustration.

Blaine muttered with a hollow expression, “So she wasn’t ‘Dead’ after all…”

Theo huffed and swept back his bangs. His hair and clothes, which had been soaking wet, were already dry. He stood up and offered a hand to Blaine.

“Let’s go. We have to find Father and Holanghee quickly and let them know.”

Holding hands once more, they walked while carefully watching their surroundings. As they reached the path leading deeper into the garden, Blaine swung their joined hands and asked a question.

“But… the warning said not to step on the ground when the ‘Rotten’ appears. That means every time she shows up, we have to climb on top of something… but where are we supposed to go?”

Theo stopped in his tracks at Blaine’s question. He looked around blankly, as if the thought hadn’t even crossed his mind. No matter where he looked, there was nowhere to climb. The only things in sight were the trees.

“The trees…?”

“The trees?”

Blaine repeated the word, eyeing the nearby foliage. The branches of the smaller trees would snap if the two of them climbed up, and the larger trees had no branches low enough to reach.

Realizing it was impossible to hide in the trees, the two decided to focus on escaping the back garden first. Once they got inside a building, there would be plenty of furniture to climb on.