Floor 2 - Mansion (8)

**

Through our discussion, we’d uncovered all the secrets hidden within the Mansion.
The Administrator girl had handed us the Front Door Key as our reward.
With it, we could escape the Mansion and return to Floor 1.

…Or so I’d thought.

“Here you go! The Front Door Key!”

What exactly was happening?
The blonde girl was smiling brightly as she held out the key.
We were in the Drawing Room, with the other three behind me.
I’d returned to the past.
Just like before.

‘…It’s exactly like what happened on B1.’

I recalled what had happened.
Only two days ago, I’d starved to death after spending a week trapped underground.

Immediately afterward, I’d returned to the previous day. This time was the same. I’d experienced death again.
The exact same message had appeared in the instant before everything ended.
The theory I’d only suspected until now had become all but certain.

‘Regression upon death…’

It seemed I possessed an ability far beyond common sense.
Was this also something caused by the Tower…?
More importantly, I was confused about what had just happened.
We had escaped. We’d definitely left the Mansion.
We’d unlocked the front door with the Front Door Key and stepped outside.
Then we’d taken one step, then two…

Crunch.

‘Crunch?’

There had been a strange sound.
The sound of something being crushed, then my consciousness cut out.
That was my final memory.
There had been no pain. No sensation at all.
It had happened in an instant.
What had happened?
My thoughts were a mess.
Eventually, they converged on one conclusion.

‘…We failed to escape?’

A cheerful voice pulled me out of my thoughts.

“Are you… not taking the key?”

I snapped back to reality.
The girl stood in front of me, looking confused by my sudden silence.

“Uh… yeah. I’ll take it.”

Still dazed, I reached for the key. Just like before, she tightened her grip around it.
She hesitated, looking painfully shy.

“If it’s not too much to ask… could you come visit me sometimes?”
“…”

The same request as before. Last time, I’d answered without hesitation. Now I couldn’t say anything.
A brief silence followed.
Apparently taking my silence as rejection, her expression fell.

“I’m sorry… I was rude to you honored guests. Please forget I said anything…!”

She bowed deeply and handed over the key without another word.

I turned away without making the pinky promise this time.
Kang Se-rim poked me in the side and scolded me.

“Jeez. She asked nicely, so you could’ve at least gone along with it. Petty bastard.”

Same routine as before.
Aside from a few small differences, everything unfolded almost exactly the same.

“Thank you for your hard work with the discussion. Please get back safely!”

With her seeing us off, we left the Drawing Room.
We followed the corridor and quickly reached the entrance.
The front door stood directly ahead. I stopped in front of it.

“Hey, what are you doing? Open it.”
“Wait… Just give me a second.”

My thoughts were still hopelessly tangled, like earphone cords stuffed into a pocket.

‘Something’s wrong… We played Floor 2’s game… We were told to discuss things together… We uncovered every secret hidden in the Mansion… and received the Front Door Key as the reward. So leaving should be the end… We should be able to get out of this hellish Floor 2 and return to the hotel…’

“…you!”

Tower. Floor 2. Mansion. Girl. Administrator. Game. Discussion. Key. Front door.
Everything flashed through my mind.
And the result waiting at the end of that long process had been brutal.
We die.
Everyone dies.
Not just me. Han Gyeong-ah, Kang Se-rim, and Lee Sa-hyuk too.
All of us.
If this were a game, it wouldn’t even qualify as a bad ending. It was just a death scene.
It felt like something that would show up as the second clip in a YouTube video titled “Tower Death Game Death Scene Compilation.”
The conclusion was simple.
We had failed to escape.
But why?
Where had we gone wrong?
The thought sent a chill through me.
If I hadn’t possessed the ability to regress, by now we’d already…

“Hey!!”

Gyeong-ah’s shout snapped me out of my thoughts.

“You scared me… Why are you suddenly yelling like that…?”
“Then answer when I call you.”

Han Gyeong-ah shrugged, then suddenly asked about my condition.

“Are you sick? You suddenly look awful…”
“It’s nothing.”
“Here we go again… Try looking at your own face before saying that.”

At some point, my body had become drenched in cold sweat. I was on the verge of panic.

“Why’d you suddenly turn into an idiot?”
“I’ve got something to think about.”
“Then hurry up and open the door.”

Kang Se-rim lightly kicked the front door, clearly unwilling to spend another second here.
But I knew.
I knew what fate awaited us outside. I forced myself to breathe and stood in front of the entrance.

“No.”
“What?”
“We can’t leave yet.”
“What the hell are you talking about…?”

Kang Se-rim frowned in confusion.

“That weirdly dressed little brat already gave us the key.”

The delinquent-looking little brat gestured toward the room containing the Western-looking little brat.
She was right.
We had earned the right to escape Floor 2.

…On the surface.

I brought up the system window.
The quest that had appeared when the Administrator explained the rules.

Flash-!

‘I knew it…’

Just as I’d suspected, the quest was still active.
During the Tutorial,

I’d received an explicit completion message when I fulfilled the objective.
But this was different. The quest was still in progress.
I checked the condition again.

‘Cooperate with the others and uncover the Mansion’s secret?’

Nowhere did it say we had to uncover it through a discussion. Even that had only been the girl’s suggestion.
We’d made a huge mistake from the very beginning.
The discussion itself had nothing to do with the game.
We’d been overwhelmed by the magical transformation she’d shown us at the start, and our thinking had been steered in that direction.
We’d naturally come to believe the discussion itself was the game.

‘Then this key…’

It wasn’t the game’s reward.
It wasn’t the real Front Door Key that would let us escape the Mansion. It was a fake.
A carefully constructed trap that led not to the exit, but to death.
The realization hit me like a blow to the back of the head.
I hid the key behind my back, away from Kang Se-rim’s reaching hand.

“Something’s wrong. There’s still another secret we haven’t uncovered.”
“She already confessed everything. What secret is left?”
“I don’t know exactly. I just have a feeling.”
“Bullshit… Give me the key!”

Kang Se-rim looked disgusted by what sounded like utter nonsense.
Honestly, I didn’t know either.
Until moments ago, I’d believed we’d uncovered everything.
But we hadn’t. We had failed to reach the truth.
Worse, I had no idea what we’d gotten wrong.
As Kang Se-rim and I argued over the key, Han Gyeong-ah stepped in.

“That’s enough, both of you… And you. Are you serious about there being another secret?”
“Of course…”
“When did you start thinking that?”
“Uh… right when we were about to leave… suddenly?”
“Hmm…”

A few simple questions later, it felt like I was being interrogated.
I felt like she’d slap handcuffs on me the second I lied.

Clink-

Right. I was already wearing them.
Gyeong-ah fell into thought over my unsupported claim.

“If there really is another secret… I suppose something does feel a little unresolved, like you said…”

Was her Intuition kicking in?
Even so, she still looked uncertain.

“I do get that feeling, but I don’t really know why. Is there a reason you’re so certain?”
“…”

I was stuck.
I was in the same position she was. The answer I’d been certain was correct had somehow been marked wrong.
And no matter how much I thought about it, our answer still seemed right. I desperately searched for an excuse, but nothing came to mind.
What were you supposed to do in a situation like this?
Usually, you asked the smart kid in class.

‘…Wait.’

There was one guy here smart enough to get into medical school.
A memory from ten minutes ago suddenly flashed through my mind, from just before we tried to leave.

-“Sa-hyuk, what’s wrong?”
-“Don’t worry about it.”

For some reason, Lee Sa-hyuk had looked dissatisfied. I’d ignored it because that was his usual personality…
But what if he knew something we didn’t?
I glanced at Lee Sa-hyuk.

“…”

He looked exactly the same as always.
He stood silently in place, his presence so faint he might as well not have been there.
That man’s head was probably filled with nothing but annoyance and cigarettes.
Looking at him killed most of my optimism. Still, he was the only variable left. My only hope.
I had no choice but to gamble on him.
I looked at Lee Sa-hyuk and answered Gyeong-ah.

“That… he knows.”

Two pairs of eyes immediately turned toward him.

“Sa-hyuk does?!”
“That old man?”
“…”

Lee Sa-hyuk said nothing after having the problem dumped on him. Instead, he glared sharply at me.

“…What do you mean?”
“Something feels wrong. I was hoping you could explain it.”
“I don’t understand.”

His reply was brief.
Not that he was confused by the situation. More like, ‘Why should I answer for you?’

“If you know, then you tell them.”

That was enough to convince me.

‘He knows something.’

I’d guessed correctly. Of course, I still had no clue what it was.

“Actually, I don’t know. But apparently you do.”
“…Hah.”

Han Gyeong-ah cautiously followed up, with Kang Se-rim joining in beside her.

“Sa-hyuk, is there still something we don’t know?”
“We can’t leave until we figure it out, so spit it out already!”

Lee Sa-hyuk pinched the bridge of his nose, already looking exhausted. He shot me a look that promised we’d settle this later.

“Haah…”

He let out a long sigh and reluctantly opened his mouth.

“The corpse.”
“What?”
“The corpse in the Bedroom.”

Kang Se-rim tilted her head.

“What about it? That’s the Mansion owner, the little brat’s dad.”

The Mansion owner.
The girl’s father.
The man who had supposedly taken his own life to end the deal after being crushed by guilt.
What about him?

“There were marks on the back of his neck too.”

Han Gyeong-ah jumped at the statement.

“What?! Really?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s impossible!”
“Believe it or don’t.”
“Oh my God…”

She looked completely stunned.
Kang Se-rim and I, lacking the relevant knowledge, didn’t understand.

“Gyeong-ah, what does that mean?”
“Haah… How do I explain this…”

She explained it simply enough for idiots like us to understand.

“Simply put… if someone hangs themselves with a rope, the body’s weight pulls downward and leaves a clear ligature mark around the neck.”
“That makes sense. The rope is supporting the person’s weight.”
“But that only applies to the front of the neck… Structurally, a hanging suicide can’t leave marks on the back of the neck.”

The reason was simple.
The necessary pressure wouldn’t be applied there.

“So if there were still injuries on the back of the neck…?”
“Then he didn’t hang himself… Someone strangled him to death.”

Someone had killed him.
It was not suicide, but murder.
If Lee Sa-hyuk was right, the Mansion owner had been murdered.
It was the exact opposite of the truth we’d supposedly reached.

“Sa-hyuk, you’re not joking, right…? How did you even find that out?”
“I examined the body.”
“The corpse?!”

Han Gyeong-ah practically jumped at his casual response.
Even I recoiled.

“Seriously?”
“Why? Got a problem?”

The corpse hanging in the Bedroom.
Gyeong-ah and I had barely been able to look at it before running out.
And he’d actually touched and examined it. Even for a doctor, that wasn’t exactly easy.
The man was simply insane.

“Unfortunately, there weren’t any cigarettes.”

No. Scratch that.
He was even crazier than I thought.

“Why didn’t you mention something that important during the discussion?!”
“You didn’t ask.”

A perfectly clear reason. Come to think of it…
He’d been dozing off while we discussed the corpse.
So the whole thing had simply passed him by.

“If you don’t believe me, go check for yourselves.”

Lee Sa-hyuk remained completely unconcerned.
If the corpse hadn’t died by suicide, we had a serious problem.
It would invalidate everything we’d supposedly uncovered about the Mansion.
We had no choice but to reexamine the Bedroom.

“At this point… we should probably go check.”
“Back there…”

Han Gyeong-ah’s shoulders trembled. Apparently, the thought of seeing the corpse again terrified her.
Last time, there had only been two of us, and we’d walked in completely unprepared.
Now we had Lee Sa-hyuk and Kang Se-rim too. If anything, Se-rim looked curious about the body.

“Unni, if you’re scared, I’ll hold your hand.”
“Thank you, Se-rim…”

And so we turned away from the entrance and headed back. Steeling ourselves, we entered the Bedroom to verify the truth.

Creak-

But what awaited us was not what we’d expected.

“…The corpse is gone.”

There was no hanging corpse. Only the room’s furniture remained.
“It was right here…!”

Han Gyeong-ah gestured toward the space in front of the bed, but the corpse that should have been there had vanished without a trace.
Its disappearance made the room feel even more sinister.
Where had it gone?
As we stared around the empty Bedroom,

“Oh? You’re still here?”

the girl peeked around the corner from the corridor and approached us in the Bedroom.