Chapter 132

“So, it didn’t wear off….”

As Theo muttered blankly, everyone turned their gaze toward him. Blaine was among them. They all looked at Theo as if demanding an explanation, but Theo simply locked eyes with Blaine and pointed toward the window.

“When I looked through the window, it wasn’t night, so I thought the activation for the Full Moon in the Courtyard had ended. I guess this is just how the system works.”

Only then did Blaine shift his gaze toward the window. With a look of feigned surprise, he looked back and forth between the window and the back door. It seemed he hadn’t noticed that it appeared to be daytime when viewed through the glass.

Wary of their behavior, Father asked in a suspicious tone, “What did you two do?”

Theo nodded and pointed to the full moon hanging over the backyard.

“We got a decorating item called ‘Full Moon in the Courtyard’ from The Unreturning Guest.”

Following Theo’s gesture, everyone’s eyes turned toward the moon. Father asked again, sounding bewildered.

“You’re saying that moon is an item?”

“Yeah. Soo… Blaine got it.”

The Tree of Abundance stood in the quiet backyard, and the massive full moon filled the sky. It was a breathtakingly beautiful sight.

“The vibes are insane…”

Noquia muttered, speaking for the three of them. Father was so captivated she couldn’t even respond, merely staring blankly. Holanghee, nodding slowly in agreement with Noquia, spoke in an excited voice.

“This is incredible… Let’s fix up the porch and eat here!”

At Holanghee’s words, Father and Noquia’s eyes sparkled. Father headed back inside, saying she needed to cook, while Holanghee and Noquia began decorating the porch with the furniture they had brought.

The two of them cleared everything off the porch and installed a six-person table made of raw, unrefined wood. In the remaining space, they set up a two-person porch swing and hung delicate potted plants from the ceiling. They also placed ornamental plants all around the porch, giving it a ‘planterior’ feel.

As the two of them stood up and admired their successful interior work, Father opened the back door and stepped out. She inspected the porch like a supervisor, nodded with a satisfied face, and began laying out all sorts of food on the table. The main dish was Porchetta, an Italian roast pork. With the final addition of the indispensable beer, it looked like nothing short of a banquet hall.

“Hey, let’s eat.”

The moment Father sat down and spoke, everyone practically lunged for their chairs and reached for the table. While everyone was busy stuffing their faces and chatting, Father, with a large piece of Porchetta in her mouth, pulled up a system window and began searching for something.

After her hand moved across the display for a long while, it stopped.

“Found it.”

“Found what?”

Sitting next to her, Holanghee tilted her head and peered at the screen.

“A walkthrough video for The Unreturning Guest.”

Everyone froze in their tracks. Come to think of it, they had forgotten. They had been so distracted by decorating the house and the food. They gathered around Father, food still in their hands or mouths.

Father tapped on the video with the highest view count among the results. The video showed a party obtaining clues about the living, the dead, and the rotting, getting hints to avoid them, and collecting the man’s mementos to escape while fleeing the chasing Bride and other ghosts.

The process wasn’t much different from what they had experienced, but it wasn’t exactly the same either. The Funeral Litter Room that Blaine had visited never appeared once. Even in the Painting Room where Father and Holanghee had gone, the video only showed up to the part where the man and the Bride promised to marry; the third room depicting the man’s betrayal never appeared. Furthermore, every time a user was caught by a ghost or the Bride, an accessory was attached to their waist. At the moment they had three, that user was out and kicked back to the lobby.

Thinking the Funeral Litter Room or the part about the man’s betrayal might show up elsewhere, they looked through other videos, but none of them contained those elements.

Even the scene at the end—the narrow path facing the main gate where the chain-bound Bride pitifully begged for the mementos back—did not appear. Some parties tried to go toward the Bride instead of the gate just for fun, but they couldn’t move backward, so they gave up and cleared the dungeon by passing through the gate.

Father rubbed her eyes, tired from watching so many videos, and turned off the screen. There was no need to see more.

“It seems the key point was the Funeral Litter Room, doesn’t it?”

As Father muttered this, everyone nodded. It seemed that for any party, the first time they were caught by the Bride, they were moved to the Painting Room regardless of the number of people. If that were the case, Blaine should have been moved to the Painting Room with Father and Holanghee. Instead, Blaine encountered a variable where he fell into the Funeral Litter Room alone, and it seemed that was what triggered the opening of the third Painting Room containing the truth.

Theo, who had been deep in thought with his chin in his hand, looked at everyone and asked.

“But what was the condition for entering the Funeral Litter Room? Was there something special about us?”

Blaine shook his head with an innocent face, and Noquia spoke up bluntly, as if it were nothing special.

“Probably just luck. A total crapshoot.”

It was an opinion that truly left no room for rebuttal.

After finishing the rest of the meal and lingering to kill time, the three finally left around 10 PM. Once the bustling house grew quiet, the tension finally left their bodies and exhaustion came crashing in.

The two of them, unable to even pull their slumped shoulders together, headed up to the second floor.

After bidding Blaine goodnight and entering his room, Theo sank onto the edge of his bed as if collapsing. Out of habit, he kicked off his boots into a corner and deactivated his Customization, reverting to the comfortably dressed Tae Seon-oh.

With a long, groaning stretch, he flopped backward onto the bed, and a wave of drowsiness immediately washed over him. His eyes were just beginning to flutter shut when—ding—a system window flickered into view.

“…What’s this?”

Theo forced his heavy eyelids open and checked the screen, his eyes widening. It was an alarm he had set months ago.

Propping himself up on his elbows, he stared blankly at the notification.

“Is it already that time…? Man, time flies.”

His schedule for tomorrow morning was as good as decided. After tapping to acknowledge the alarm and closing the display, Theo seemed lost in thought for a moment as he glanced toward Blaine’s room. However, he soon shook his head.

“I’ll just ask him tomorrow.”

Muttering softly, he turned off the lights and lay back down. Total darkness rushed in, save for the faint moonlight filtering through the window, casting a dim glow across the room.

“Yawn.”

He let out a jaw-cracking yawn and tried to drift off again. But suddenly, in his fading vision, the atmosphere of his room seemed to overlap with the eerie vibe of the Unreturning Guest dungeon.

“!”

His eyes snapped open. He lay there, frozen and paralyzed, scanning every corner of the room with wide eyes. There was no way anything was actually there, yet a chill ran down his spine.

Moving only his eyes in a tense face, Theo finally scrambled to turn the lights on and sat up.

“Dammit… that’s scary.”

He thought he had been fine, but being left alone caused the delayed fear and dread to come rushing back. It didn’t look like he’d be getting any sleep at this rate. Theo paced the room restlessly, biting his nails as he looked toward Blaine’s door.

“He’s probably asleep, right…?”

He shook his head again. How could he wake up his younger brother just because he was scared? Theo continued to hover anxiously around the room. Then, he turned to look out the window in the direction of the Guild House.

“Should I go to the Guild House…? There are bound to be people pulling all-nighters there….”

It seemed like a better idea than waking Blaine. Deciding there was no need for further hesitation, Theo started toward the door. Just as he reached out to grab the handle, a sudden knock, knock echoed through the room.

“Eek!”

The unexpected sound felt exceptionally loud in the silence, causing Theo to let out a shrill scream.

After parting ways with Theo and entering his own room, Blaine stood blankly in front of the door. He turned back and stared at it. While living in the same house as Theo was great, it was still the same old story—they had to be apart while Theo slept.

His wolf ears drooped dejectedly, mirroring his somber expression. Since staring at the door wouldn’t make Theo appear, Blaine trudged over and sat listlessly on the edge of his bed. He pulled out a pouch of Retai Powder and was about to take a pinch when he suddenly looked up as if remembering something.

His gloomy face instantly brightened. Blaine jumped up and hurried out of his room. Standing before Theo’s door with a flushed, excited face, he raised his hand to knock but stopped. Realizing something, he lowered his hand and pulled up his display to deactivate his Customization. He then messily rummaged through his hair, making himself look exactly like someone who had just crawled out of bed.

Once his preparations were complete, Blaine placed a hand on his chest, took two deep breaths, and composed his expression before knocking on the door.

He’s not asleep already, is he? He waited expectantly for an answer, only to hear a sharp scream from inside.

“?!”

Startled by the scream, Blaine shouted, “Hyung?!” and threw the door open without a second thought.

Inside the wide-open door, he saw Theo huddled up, arms wrapped around his head as if shielding himself. To make matters stranger, the room was brightly lit.

Quickly scanning the room, Blaine rushed over to Theo’s side.

“Hy-Hyung? Are you okay?”

Instinctively, Blaine grabbed Theo’s arms to pull them down and check on him. Only then did Theo open his tightly shut eyes and recognize the person in front of him.

Blaine was staring at him, his face a mask of worry. The moment he confirmed who it was, Theo let out a resentful sigh of relief.

“Ah… seriously….”

The extreme tension snapped, leaving his legs trembling. Theo leaned over, bracing his hands against his shaking knees.

“Hyung?!”

Blaine hovered his arms around him, unsure what to do. After bending over and taking several deep breaths to steady his heart, Theo grabbed Blaine’s flailing arms and straightened up. His face, which had been pale with fright, was now completely relaxed with relief.

“What are you doing here at this hour?”

Perhaps because of the relief following extreme fear, his voice came out sounding much gentler than usual. Theo didn’t seem to notice, but Blaine froze up in embarrassment and began to stammer.

“Ah, well… that… the thing is….”

“?”

“Well…. That dungeon today was so scary…. I guess that’s why I can’t really fall asleep….”

Instead of answering, Theo’s expression said, ‘You too?’

“So… I was wondering if I could sleep with you, just for today….”

“…Huh?”

It was an unexpected proposal. As Theo asked back blankly, Blaine swallowed hard and met Theo’s gaze. He spoke with the most pitiful and pathetic expression he could muster.

“I feel like I’ll have nightmares if I sleep alone.”