Chapter 123

Theo and Blaine hurried back to the middle gate and felt a surge of relief when they saw it was still wide open. They had been worried it might have closed or locked behind them.

As they crossed the gate, Father and Holanghee approached them as if they had been waiting.

“Hey, are you guys okay?”

“We were so worried because you didn’t show up.”

Father and Holanghee chattered busily while checking over them, but Theo and Blaine brushed aside their concerns to reveal the Bride’s true identity.

“She’s a ‘Rotten’ one? Not ‘Dead’?”

Holanghee shouted in a rough, startled voice. Father also looked skeptical, mimicking a walking motion with her index and middle fingers as she asked.

“That makes no sense. She was walking on two legs. Don’t the Rotten ones crawl?”

Theo nodded, understanding their reaction.

“Her sleeves were incredibly long, right? Long enough to touch the ground. From the outside, it looks like she’s walking on two legs, but beneath those sleeves, her arms are stretched out and stepping on the ground.”

When Theo went into detail about how they had managed to see beneath her sleeves, Father muttered irritably, “Those bastards are so sly… They purposefully erased the info about the Dead in the library and tricked us into thinking the Bride was a Dead entity just to mess with us.”

Holanghee stood there with her mouth agape. “Are they insane…? Are the developers perverts or something?”

She looked ready to track down the creators and smash everything once they cleared the dungeon. Beside the fuming Holanghee, Father sighed and swept back her stray hair, looking down at the floor.

“Anyway… the rule for the Rotten is ‘Do not step on the floor,’ right?”

“Yeah.”

Father scanned the surroundings. Outside, there was practically nowhere that didn’t count as the “floor.” If she had to pick something, maybe the trees? In other words, there was nowhere to hide out here.

“Let’s get inside a building, fast.”

Turning back without a hint of hesitation, Father hurried toward the hall, and the others followed close behind.

Once back inside the hall where they had found the Seojodae, they began to wander through the maze-like interior once again. Since there were many spaces they hadn’t explored when they first entered, they kept themselves busy.

It was easy to distinguish the unexplored rooms because they had left the doors open to any place they had already searched. As they were rummaging through various rooms, the sound of the floorboards creaking began to echo from the distance.

Everyone stopped what they were doing mid-motion. They focused simultaneously, gauging the location of the sound, then exchanged glances and moved swiftly.

While they scrambled in unison to perch atop the storage chest, stationary chests, beds, and wardrobes in the room, the creaking sound drew closer.

A moment later, the Bride appeared through the wide-open door. With that peculiar, gliding gait that showed no upper-body movement, the Bride stood before the door and slowly turned her head to scan the room.

Everyone watched her with bated breath. However, their eyes were fixed on her sleeves rather than her face. The thought that arms long enough to reach the ground were hidden inside those sleeves was grotesque and chilling.

Technically, they were allowed to make noise now, but they still held their breath while observing her. The eyes disguised as bridal spots rolled with a squelching sound, scouring every corner of the room.

‘Look all you want,’ Theo thought. They all thought the same. But contrary to their expectations, the Bride slowly stepped into the room. And then, she unleashed a wail.

Everyone clutched their ears and curled into balls, feeling an impact like their bodies were being torn apart. The situation was so sudden that they couldn’t even scream.

The aftershocks of a wail delivered at point-blank range rattled their entire frames. Theo’s skin felt tingly, and his internal organs churned as if someone were shaking them. Even clenching his fists was too painful. Groaning in his curled position, Theo finally managed to lift his head and look down at the room.

“…?”

There was no one in the room. Not just the Bride—but Holanghee, who had been on the chest; Blaine, who had been on the storage chest; and Father, who had been on the bed—everyone was gone.

Theo stared down at the empty room with a bewildered expression and hurriedly stood up. His head spun from the sudden movement, and he nearly fell off the top of the wardrobe.

Staggering down from the wardrobe, Theo searched every corner of the room, but the others were truly gone. Only Theo, standing with a face full of confusion, and the lantern Father had been holding remained in the silent room.

“Guys…?”

Theo tried calling out just in case, but no answer returned. Anxiety and dread began to set in. After pacing frantically around the room, he stepped out into the hallway and called everyone’s name once more, but only the echo of his own voice ringing through the emptiness came back to him.

“Blaine!”

Feeling as if something were about to lung at him from behind, he spun around in place and called for Blaine, but he didn’t answer either.

His palms grew damp, and his hands began to tremble uncontrollably. Theo repeatedly moved between the room and the hallway, searching the vicinity for the others, but he couldn’t find a soul.

Standing there dejectedly, staring blankly down the corridor illuminated by the scattered hanging lanterns, Theo felt himself sway and instinctively reached out to steady himself against the wall.

“?”

He felt something beneath his palm. When he regained his balance and pulled his hand away, he saw a piece of paper. It was too dark to make out the writing. Theo hurried back into the room to grab the lantern and brought it out to shine a light on the paper.

[The Rotten cannot lift their heads.]

“…?”

At first, he didn’t understand what it meant. Theo glared at the paper with a deep furrow in his brow, then, as if something had clicked, he ran back into the room where everyone had vanished. He looked up at the wardrobe he had been standing on.

Unlike the storage chest, the stationary chest, and the bed, the wardrobe was quite tall. Compared to his own height of 177cm, it looked to be about 190cm high. The Bride’s height, at a rough estimate, was somewhere around 160cm.

‘The Rotten cannot lift their heads.’

The Bride couldn’t see anything higher than her own height. That was why he, who had been on top of the wardrobe, was safe—while everyone else on the lower spots had disappeared.

“Ugh…”

Blaine woke up with a splitting headache. As he pushed himself up while clutching his throbbing head, the scent of incense hit him hard.

“?”

He lifted his head warily at the unfamiliar smell, realizing he was in a place he had never seen before. His confusion lasted only a moment before Theo flashed through his mind.

“Hyung?!”

Blaine scrambled to his feet and called for Theo, but as he turned around, he froze in his tracks. Behind him stood a massive funeral bier. In front of the palanquin was a large altar decorated with chrysanthemums, incense, and black-and-white banners—and lying perfectly still upon that altar was a man, devoid of any color.

Blaine stared at the man on the altar, completely stiff.

For some reason, he had a hunch that this was the man from the scroll in the pavilion, even though the man’s face in the scroll had been erased.

He stepped closer to the altar to get a better look, but nothing unusual stood out. Blaine hesitated before waving his hand over the man’s eyes, just to see if he might still be alive.

However, the man’s tightly closed eyelids didn’t show even a flicker of movement. Feeling a sense of relief, Blaine swept a hand over his chest and began to scan the area for an exit.

He had no memory of what happened after the Bride’s wail. He thought they could avoid the “Rotten” as long as they didn’t step on the floor, so he couldn’t understand why the Bride had attacked them. He had simply opened his eyes to find himself here. He didn’t know why he was here or what had happened to the others, but he had to find Theo.

Theo might be alone just like him, and if he was, he might be searching for Blaine as desperately as he had in the back garden.

Finding the way out was easier than expected. It wasn’t hidden like the exit in the garden; it was right there on one side of the wall, and it wasn’t even locked.

As he cautiously slid open the paper door, a faint light flickered in the pitch-black darkness. Looking down, he saw a lantern sitting in the middle of the wooden floor—as if it had been prepared specifically for him. Blaine looked at the lantern with a grimace before scanning his surroundings.

No matter where he looked, there was only darkness. No hanging lanterns, no moonlight. Blaine had no choice but to pick up the lantern. He needed it to navigate through the dark where he couldn’t see an inch in front of him.

He had successfully left the room with the funeral bier and secured a light, but he felt overwhelmed. He had no idea where he was or which way to go to find Theo.

“…….”

After looking back and forth between the paths stretching in both directions, Blaine silently turned toward the left. When in doubt, he had no choice but to trust his luck and intuition.

Left all alone, Theo set out to find the three who had vanished. Part of him wanted to climb back onto the wardrobe and stay perfectly still, but he didn’t want to show such a pathetic side of himself to Blaine.

Holding the lantern with trembling hands, he steadied his wobbly legs and forced himself forward one agonizing step at a time, until the sound of wailing reached his ears from somewhere in the distance.

The hair on the back of his neck stood up, and his skin crawled.

“Eek!”

A shrill scream escaped him unintentionally, and the distant wailing stopped abruptly. Then, a voice thick with tears asked, “Who is it?” The eerie, echoing voice brought a sudden surge of tears to his eyes.

He was terrified. His breath hitched and he instinctively stepped backward. Fearing he might burst into sobs, he covered his mouth and tried to turn around and flee, but then he heard the sound of someone running toward him from behind, accompanied by the question: “Who is it? You, who are you?”

“Aaaakh!”

Theo screamed and bolted. However, he didn’t get far before he was caught by the thing following him. He felt a tug at the scruff of his neck and tumbled backward. The entity began fumbling all over Theo’s body, asking, “Who is it? You, who are you? Who could it be?” Theo flailed his arms and legs, shouting, “Argh, go away!” The figure flinched and pulled its hands away, then asked urgently.

“Theo? Is that you, Theo?!”

Only then did Theo stop struggling and lift his head. A dark silhouette stood before him. His hair was still standing on end, but as he calmed down, the voice sounded familiar. Theo fumbled to raise his lantern and identify the person.

“Noquia?!”

The one revealed under the lantern light was Noquia.