Floor 2 - Mansion (2)

**

What was she doing here?
For a moment, I couldn’t believe my eyes.
Sharp, upturned eyes like an ornery cat, and a school uniform shirt loosened at the collar as though it felt stifling.
There she was, a fierce-looking high school girl who looked every bit like a delinquent.

“…Kang Se-rim?”

My relief at seeing her lasted only a moment before I realized the position we were in was a little strange.
We were pressed so close together that we could feel each other’s breath. It was a stale setup straight out of a ’90s comic.
Feeling awkward for no good reason, I hurriedly scrambled off her.

“Ugh…”

Kang Se-rim groggily came to her senses and finally noticed me.
The moment she saw me, she scowled.
Her already fierce eyes sharpened even further.

“Wanna die? What the fuck are you doing dropping out of the ceiling like that?”
“Sorry. It was an accident. Seriously.”

I raised both hands in surrender and apologized.
Honestly, I was surprised too. I hadn’t expected to find her this quickly.
Maybe I should call it good luck.
I’d found her almost immediately after we’d been separated upon arriving at the Mansion.
We weren’t exactly on good terms, even by the most generous standards…
but right now, simply finding someone to travel with was reassuring.

“Hey, why are you alone? Where’s unni?”
“I don’t know either. I was in the elevator, and the next thing I knew, I was here.”
“Haah… What the fuck is this…”

Kang Se-rim angrily brushed back her disheveled hair.
She’d gone through the same thing I had.

‘Looks like she just woke up too.’

Unlike me, she apparently hadn’t seen the system message and had no idea what was going on.
She looked frustrated, so I casually filled her in on what I knew.

“Don’t freak out, but I think this is Floor 2.”
“Floor 2? This place?”
“Think about where we were right before this.”

I rattled off one reason after another. It was surreal, but by now, that was hardly anything new.
We’d seen enough over the last few days. Kang Se-rim bit her lip and listened carefully.

“Hmm…”

She didn’t argue or deny it. She’d experienced the same thing herself.
Even Gyeong-ah couldn’t match how quickly she accepted reality.

“Damn it. Of all the crazy shit to happen…”

Kang Se-rim grimaced in disgust.
Unlike a certain scaredy-cat, she was quick to accept reality.
I went on to tell her what I’d just experienced, from the locked front door to hiding in the ventilation shaft.

“…So we avoid whoever that was and find the key?”
“Yeah. If we escape the Mansion, we should be able to get off Floor 2.”

I made her a suggestion.

“Since we ran into each other anyway, how about sticking together?”
“No. Fuck off.”

An immediate rejection without a moment’s hesitation.
She said it as naturally as if we were having an ordinary conversation.

“…That’s pretty cold.”
“Of course it is. It’s you.”

Hard to argue with that.

“Listen carefully. I’ve only been holding back because of unni. I still haven’t forgiven a bastard like you.”
“…”
“I don’t know what you’re scheming, but don’t talk to me like we’re friends.”

Kang Se-rim snapped at me sharply. Maybe because Gyeong-ah wasn’t around, she was even more hostile than usual.
Considering what Kim Yohan had done in Chapter 1, that was only natural.
This was exactly the treatment shameless trash deserved. It was practically a miracle she was even speaking to me.
I tried to placate her as much as possible while making my case.

“I know how much you hate me. If you got the chance, you’d probably love to sock me one.”
“…”

She looked like she actually might, so I hurried on.

“But this isn’t exactly a normal situation. We can’t even find the people who came to Floor 2 before us.”

The Mansion was unknown territory.
I’d barely escaped from the Drawing Room myself.
Sticking together would be several times safer than moving around alone.
And I definitely wasn’t saying that because I was scared to be alone.

‘…Seriously.’

I continued trying to persuade her.

“Trying to wander around a place like this alone is reckless. We can’t find Gyeong-ah either.”
“…”

For a moment, Kang Se-rim’s gaze wavered. Mentioning Han Gyeong-ah clearly struck a nerve.
“…What are you trying to say?”
“I’m saying we cooperate so we can escape the Mansion. We can look for the Front Door Key and find Gyeong-ah at the same time.”

I made the offer again.
Objectively speaking, there was no reason to refuse.
But Kang Se-rim hesitated, because I was Kim Yohan.
‘This bastard must be plotting something…’
That was probably what she was thinking.

“Hey, let me ask you one thing. Why are you trying to find unni?”

Kang Se-rim suddenly asked.
Kim Yohan and Han Gyeong-ah had always been fundamentally opposed to each other.
She was monitoring and controlling me around the clock.
Our relationship was bad if anything. There was no reason for us to be close.
So from her perspective, it made no sense that I’d suddenly volunteer to search for Han Gyeong-ah.

“Shouldn’t a bastard like you be happy now that the woman watching you is gone?”

She was sharper than she looked.
The real Kim Yohan probably would’ve celebrated, but I wasn’t that bastard, so I casually denied it.

“Of course not.”

This was my chance to show how much I’d changed. I spoke as sincerely as possible, as though I’d truly repented for my past sins.

“I’ve been reflecting on my actions. Gyeong-ah’s willingness to sacrifice herself really taught me a lot. From now on, I want to work together with everyone and…”
“Bullshit.”

She wasn’t buying it.
Repairing an image once it had gone bad really wasn’t easy.

“Spit it out. What kind of bullshit are you pulling?”
“It’s nothing like that. I’m genuinely worried about Gyeong-ah.”
“No matter how I look at it, there’s no way this bastard actually repented…”

Kang Se-rim muttered to herself with a doubtful expression.

“With unni gone, maybe I should be the one keeping an eye on this bastard…”

She thought about it for a long moment.
Finally, looking resigned, she uncrossed her arms.

“Fine… I don’t know what a bastard like you might do, so I’d rather keep you where I can see you.”

That was basically permission.

“So you agree?”
“I’m not trusting you. I’m only going along with this because I need to find unni.”

Finding Han Gyeong-ah was apparently more important to her than her distrust of me. And while she was at it, she’d keep watch over Kim Yohan in unni’s place.

“If you try anything suspicious, I’ll kill you myself.”
“Don’t worry about it.”

And just like that, we formed a temporary alliance.
Running into her this early was incredibly lucky. Just having someone else around made the Mansion less frightening.
I finally took a proper look around the room.
I’d been too busy falling out of the vent to notice, but the room was packed with bookshelves.
No wonder it had smelled like a library.

“Looks like this is… a study.”

The stale scent of old paper filled the air.
For now, finding the missing Han Gyeong-ah was more important than the key.

“Let’s get out of here first and look for places Gyeong-ah might be.”

I tried to leave the Study.

Click-

“Huh?”

Click, click-

What’s wrong with this thing?
When I started fumbling with the door, Kang Se-rim snickered at me.

“Moron~ What are you doing?”
“The door won’t open.”
“It’s been like that from the start. If it wasn’t, I would’ve gotten the hell out of this place already.”

Apparently, the Study had been locked from the beginning.
That explained it. She wasn’t exactly the type to sit around doing nothing.
So she’d been trapped here because the door was locked.

“Did you look for a way out?”
“I don’t know. I was trying to, but then I heard some weird noise from the ceiling… I looked up to see what it was, and some crazy bastard suddenly came flying out.”
“…”

So that’s what happened.
The timing was incredible.
If anything, this worked out nicely.

“Then we can look together. Let’s work together and find a way out of the Study.”
“What a pain in the ass…”

Ignoring her as she shook her head, I started thinking.
A way out of the Study…
I changed my approach and looked up at the ceiling. Maybe we could use the vent I’d come through…

‘No. Too high.’

Realistically, there was no way. The ceiling was far too high.
Using the books as makeshift steps would be dangerous too.
Besides, the vent connected back to the Drawing Room.
What would I even do there?
That’d be a one-way trip to the afterlife.
Was there another way?

“Why don’t we just forget the key and smash the damn door down?”

Kang Se-rim casually offered the novel suggestion.
It was a bold stroke of genius that basically said screw the rules of the game.
A bold idea only an ordinary person without any preconceptions could come up with.
She actually looked ready to do it, so I stopped her.

“Wait. Let’s search a little more first. Who knows what might happen if we start forcing things.”
“Seriously…”

Kang Se-rim grumbled and backed off.
Brute force was a last resort. We hadn’t even properly investigated yet, so we put that option aside.
We decided to search first and make a decision afterward. We split up the room and began searching the Study.

‘That’s a lot of books.’

Rows of bookshelves stretched across the room.
They were packed with books of every kind.
Thick hardcovers, faded literary collections, British and American books…
I pulled out a random book within reach.

Hmm.
I opened it and quickly discovered that it was definitely not a clue. It was an erotic novel about a wealthy master raping a maid.

What the hell was this plot?
The descriptions were needlessly explicit, making me feel awkward just reading them.
The moment I put the book back on the shelf, my eyes met Kang Se-rim’s behind me.
She was staring at me with utter contempt.

“Is now really the time to be reading porn?”
“No, that’s not what…”
“Pervert.”

I wanted to protest the misunderstanding, but the photograph in her hand caught my attention.

“What’s… that photo?”
“I found it searching the shelves while you were busy looking at dirty stuff. Why?”

She irritably shoved the photo at me, and I took it without complaint.

It was a photograph developed from film.
It showed two people who looked like family.
A man in a suit and a young girl in a dress.
The image was faded and blurry from age.
A photograph treated as an item in a room full of nothing but books…
It was blatantly suspicious.
This had to be an important clue.

“Where did you find this?”
“It was tucked into a bookshelf.”

I examined the photo closely.
When I flipped it over, something felt off.

“This…”
“Well? See anything?”
“There are scratches on the surface.”

These weren’t ordinary marks caused by years of wear. Someone had scratched them there deliberately.

…Writing?

I raised the photoh overhead and held it up against the ceiling lamp.
The reflected light revealed letters scratched across the surface.
They were so faint that I would’ve missed them without looking carefully.
I slowly read them aloud.

“Bookcase 3… second shelf from the top… fifth book…”

My eyes lit up midway through reading it. The code scratched into the photo was pointing to a location.

“Wait, where?”
“Bookcase 3, second shelf from the top, fifth book!”

We hurried to the specified bookcase and checked the shelf and position.
Then we found it.
A thick hardcover sat exactly where the code indicated.

“Hey, this is it, right?”
“Probably.”

I carefully placed my hand on the spine, then yanked it out without hesitation.
As the tightly wedged hardcover came free, a mechanical click sounded from somewhere inside the bookshelf.

“What was that?”
“Sounds like something opened.”

We both turned toward the same place: the Study door that had been locked from the start.

Creak-

The door that hadn’t budged before now swung open easily. Pulling out the hardcover had released the lock.

“Holy shit… It opened?!”
“Looks like that book was the key.”

At last, we could leave the Study. I cautiously poked just my head through the doorway.
The corridor was empty.
There were none of those unsettling footsteps from before either. This was the perfect chance to slip out unnoticed.

“Hey, Se-rim, you ready?”
“Don’t call me by my name like we’re close. Not unless you want me to kill you.”

Translated from high-school-girl, that meant, ‘I’ve been ready forever!’
We were ready to go.
We opened the door and stepped into the corridor.
Then we set off to find Gyeong-ah somewhere within the Mansion.