Floor 2 - Mansion (6)

**

We sat around the round table facing one another.
The game had begun, but no one was quite ready to speak.
The Drawing Room had transformed with a single gesture. Han Gyeong-ah looked around in a panic.

“W-What even is this…?”
“Gyeong-ah, calm down. All that changed is the scenery.”
“The whole place changed, and you call that ‘only’?!”
“She is the Administrator, after all… I guess this much isn’t surprising.”
“Ahem!”

The girl puffed up proudly.
I’d expected as much, but she was clearly far from an ordinary human. Kang Se-rim looked utterly fed up.

“This is fucking ridiculous… So what now? What was it you said? We’re supposed to discuss it?”
“Right. We have to play the game now. Uncover the Mansion’s secret or whatever.”
“So just like last time, we don’t really have a choice…”

Gyeong-ah still looked confused, but she was doing her best to keep up.
I recalled the quest window from earlier and brought it up again.

The rules of the game were simple.
Discuss things together and uncover the secret hidden within the Mansion.
That was all.
But it was so abstract that I still had no idea how to actually begin.

“I have a question. What’s the time limit?”
“There isn’t one! So there’s no need to rush. Take your time talking things through!”

So there was no time limit.
That was a relief, at least.

‘So this isn’t one of those brutal games where we die if we don’t reach the truth before time runs out.’

I felt a little more at ease.
At least we wouldn’t have to panic under a ticking clock.
Still, I couldn’t let my guard down.
This was a death game, after all.
Keeping that firmly in mind, I approached the game as cautiously as possible.
That lasted right up until we hit our first obstacle.

‘So… what do we do now?’

I scratched my head like a chimpanzee.
Now that it was time to actually start, I had no idea what to do.
“Discuss,” she said…
I didn’t even know where to begin. Maybe I should’ve watched more current-affairs debate shows.
I felt completely lost.
Like a lost child, I turned to the pretty policewoman for help.

“Gyeong-ah, what do people usually start with in a situation like this?”
“Don’t ask me… This is my first time doing something like this too…”
“You’re a police officer. Haven’t you done plenty of investigations?”
“I am a police officer, but…”

She shook her head.

“I’m not in the detective division, so I don’t know much about that kind of work.”
“Is the field different?”
“My job is more about patrolling assigned areas and maintaining public safety…”
“Come to think of it, you’re with the Mobile Patrol Unit.”

I remembered seeing Gyeong-ah’s police ID in her room.

[Seoul Police Station]
Mobile Patrol Unit, Team 2
Officer Han Gyeong-ah
++

Apparently, not every police officer worked in the same line of duty.
I’d been picturing the kind you always saw in movies and TV dramas.
The kind who wore plain clothes, went undercover, beat up petty criminals who underestimated them for being women…
Who were strict with their juniors, had nicknames like “Mad Chihuahua,” and constantly complained about their superiors…

“That’s kind of what I thought you did.”
“You watch too many dramas.”

A character inside a game was telling me that dramas weren’t reality.
Was she really one to talk?

“Wait a second… How do you know what unit I’m assigned to?”
“Just had a feeling. Anyway, why don’t we choose a topic first?”
“What kind of answer is that?!”
“Don’t worry about the little things.”

I quickly changed the subject before she realized I’d slipped up.
Either way, we needed a topic to start the discussion.

“Anything’s fine. Use those police instincts of yours and throw something out there.”
“If you put it that way…”

After thinking for a moment, Han Gyeong-ah made a suggestion.

“Why don’t we start with the most suspicious thing?”
“Not bad.”

It was a good way to open the discussion, so we made that our first point.

“The most suspicious thing…”
“Isn’t it obvious?”

Kang Se-rim pointed at someone as though the answer should’ve been obvious.

“Who else but her?”
“Eek!”

The girl who’d appeared out of nowhere.
There was the invitation, and she’d introduced herself as Floor 2’s Administrator.
She’d even transformed the room with a single gesture.
Her very existence was suspicious.

“True…”
“Then why don’t we start by talking about who she really is?”

We had our first major topic.
The conversation naturally moved forward, and we began our discussion with that question.

【About the Girl’s Identity~】

“Hey, you! Who the hell are you?!”

Kang Se-rim opened aggressively. The girl looked frightened but stood her ground.

“I’m running the game, so I can’t tell you! You’ll have to figure it out yourselves!”
“You little…”
“From now until the discussion is over, I won’t say another word! Mmph!”

Apparently determined not to give us even the slightest clue, she covered her mouth with both hands.
Was she really planning to stay like that until the discussion ended?

“…You’re going to stay like that?”
“Mmph.”
“Guess so.”

Well, there was no way she’d simply tell us her identity.
We had to reach the truth ourselves.
So I started with the first thing that stood out.

“As everyone knows, we’ve already seen her before.”
“I thought so too…”

The portrait in the Main Hall.
The painting of a young blonde girl sitting demurely with a faint smile on her lips.

“The one you were staring at like an idiot?”
“…Anyway, she looks exactly like the girl in the portrait. They’re clearly the same person.”

That was why I’d been surprised when I first saw her. I’d immediately had an idea who she might be.
I checked my inventory.

Then I pulled out one of the items and showed it to everyone.

“Take a look at this. We found it in the Study.”
“A photo…?”

“Se-rim found it while we were trapped in the Study.”
“Really?!”
“Yes, unni…”
“Good job. I’m proud of you!”

Kang Se-rim blushed, apparently embarrassed by unni’s praise.
No matter how rough and fierce she usually was, she turned into a docile little lamb whenever she was around Gyeong-ah.

“Thanks. We found it because of you.”
“Who asked you, dumbass?”

Still as charming as ever.
I turned my attention back to the photo.
It showed two people who appeared to be a father and daughter.
The man wore a refined suit, while the girl wore an expensive-looking dress.
The photo was too faded to make out much detail, but they seemed to come from a wealthy family.
The vast, extravagant Mansion certainly supported that. Han Gyeong-ah studied the man in the picture closely.

“Do you think he’s the owner of this Mansion?”
“Probably. There’s a good chance.”
“Then the girl beside him…”
“Maybe his daughter.”

A family photo of the Mansion owner and his daughter.
And then there was the portrait of the girl hanging in the Main Hall.
The evidence lined up neatly.
What it all pointed to seemed obvious.
Putting the clues together, I turned my gaze to one side.
The girl stood there with a complicated expression.
Floor 2’s Administrator.
There was only one identity that fit our deductions.

“She’s probably the Mansion owner’s daughter from the photo.”
“…”

The girl remained silent at my conclusion, her doll-like hands still clamped over her mouth.
But her eyes were another story.
They trembled with a chaotic mixture of emotions.

“It certainly looks that way…”

And so we arrived at one answer: the girl’s ‘identity’ was ‘the Mansion owner’s daughter.’

“…Which is exactly why this is strange.”
“What? What do you mean?”
“It doesn’t add up. If she’s really the Mansion owner’s daughter, there’s one question we still can’t answer.”

I immediately produced the evidence, taking another clue from my inventory and placing it on the round table.

“We found this while investigating.”
“A Medical Report…?”
“Hey, you had something like this?”
“I showed it to you earlier. You were the one determined not to read it.”

I’d kept it because it seemed like the kind of item that would matter later. Good thing I had.
Han Gyeong-ah took the report and read it. It said:

The problem was where we’d found it, inside an extremely girlish, fairy-tale-like bedroom.
The Mansion owner had only one daughter. It wasn’t hard to guess whose room it was.

“It was in a drawer in the Mansion owner’s daughter’s room.”
“Which means…”

Han Gyeong-ah trailed off.
I understood immediately what she was thinking.
I nodded.

“This Medical Report probably belongs to the daughter.”

She’d been frail since birth and eventually received a terminal prognosis for an incurable illness of unknown cause.
It was a tragic story about a young girl. Which made the present situation impossible to explain.

“Somehow, the Mansion owner’s daughter is still alive.”

Everyone’s gaze immediately shifted in the same direction.
Toward the perfectly healthy girl standing before us, the girl who should have died long ago.

“Mmph!”

With everyone staring at her, her face reddened in embarrassment.
She looked nothing like someone who’d once been given a terminal prognosis.

“She looks fucking fine to me.”
“That’s exactly what’s strange.”

It was a glaring contradiction.
Kang Se-rim threw out the first possibility that came to mind.

“What else? Maybe she made some miraculous recovery.”

Then, as though suddenly remembering something, she called out to Lee Sa-hyuk.

“Right! You’re a doctor, old man. Can you tell anything from this?”
“…”

He looked annoyed at being dragged into the conversation. Come to think of it, he was participating too.
He hadn’t said a single word since the discussion began, simply sitting at the table and listening as though none of this concerned him.
His entire attitude screamed, ‘Game or whatever, you people figure it out yourselves.’
Something like that.

“…Do I have to?”
“Just do it!”

Kang Se-rim shoved the report at him. Lee Sa-hyuk gave it a cursory read before answering.

“Don’t know. Probably died.”
“Read it properly!”
“It says terminal.”

He casually tapped the report with a finger.

“A terminal prognosis is effectively a death sentence. It isn’t something a doctor gives lightly.”
“…”
“A doctor gives one only after observing the patient’s prognosis and deciding there is no realistic hope of recovery, then estimating how much time the patient has left.”

Despite his indifferent tone, he was surprisingly serious. Maybe because he was an actual doctor, his words carried weight.

“There are rare cases where someone given a terminal prognosis makes a miraculous recovery… but those involve things like late-stage cancer or difficult-to-treat diseases. An incurable disease is, by definition, not something you can cure.”
“Is that really true?”
“Not unless some new drug is developed. Especially when the cause of the illness isn’t even known.”

His voice was firm.
I was mildly surprised by the dry explanation. So he was capable of talking at length after all.
Apparently, medical matters were serious enough to get him talking. If only he were this conversational all the time.
Either way, the conclusion was simple.
If the Medical Report was accurate, the girl should have died.

“Then why is she alive?”
“Don’t know.”

Frustrated, Kang Se-rim glared fiercely at the girl. The girl visibly shrank under her stare.

“Uuu…”

Meanwhile, Han Gyeong-ah fell deep into thought.

“Could the report have been falsified? Medical records can be altered, can’t they?”

A forged document?
It was a plausible theory. Realistically, it was entirely possible.
Which was precisely why it couldn’t be the answer.
There was still something that couldn’t be explained, so I shook my head.

“Your theory makes sense, Gyeong-ah, but I doubt that’s it.”
“Why…? What makes you say that?”
“Because there’s a mystery here that can’t be explained with ordinary logic.”
“What mystery?”

I gestured toward the girl, the fundamental contradiction at the heart of the Mansion.

“Why is she here in the Tower as Floor 2’s Administrator?”

It seemed the time had come to shift the discussion.

“Why don’t we talk about that next?”
“…All right. If you think it’s important.”

What exactly was an Administrator?
If we could uncover that secret, maybe the contradiction would finally make sense.
I felt like we were gradually closing in on the truth. And so we continued the discussion with a new topic.

【About the Administrator~】