Floor 2 - Mansion (9)

**

“Oh? You’re still here?”

The sudden voice made the back of my neck go stiff.
The girl must have sensed us in the Bedroom and come looking.

“I thought you’d already left… Is there something you need?”

She looked puzzled to find us still in the Mansion.
She tilted her head with a confused expression.
Kang Se-rim frowned at her.

“Hey, let me ask you something.”
“Sure!”
“The missing cor… Mmph!”

She was about to blurt out a question about the missing corpse, so I clamped a hand over her mouth.

“Cor?”
“I mean, wa… watch…! Have you seen a missing watch?”

I improvised an excuse before she could grow suspicious.

“A watch?”
“We were going to leave the Mansion… but Gyeong-ah realized she’d lost her wristwatch. So we’re looking for it.”
“Eek! Really?!”

I hurriedly signaled Han Gyeong-ah with my eyes. Catching on, she nodded and hid her right hand behind her back.

‘Nice, Gyeong-ah.’

She might act clueless at times, but she could be quick on the uptake when it mattered.
Then she began pretending she’d lost her watch.

“Th-That’s right…! My wristwatch is gone! I must have dropped it somewhere while we were investigating the Mansion. I really need to find it…”

At the same time, I realized my mistake.

‘Right… Gyeong-ah is terrible at lying.’

I’d remembered too late.
The upright and honest Gyeong-ah was absolutely awful at telling lies.
She stammered through the lines in a stiff, theatrical tone like she was reading from a script.

“It’s a precious gift my father gave me for passing the police exam… and I carelessly went and lost such a treasure…!”

It was impressive in an entirely different way.
It was like watching a famous idol who’d landed an acting role through popularity alone.
If I could’ve, I would’ve covered Gyeong-ah’s mouth too.
And yet…

“Eek! You lost a gift from your father…? You absolutely have to find something that precious!”

The terrible acting worked.

‘She actually bought that?’

Maybe because she was young, she believed every word without a trace of suspicion.
Was that a good thing?
Mixed emotions washed over me as I hurriedly added to the story.

“I don’t think we can leave Floor 2 until we find the watch.”

Not bad for something I’d made up on the spot.
Unable to simply stand by while we were in trouble, the girl immediately offered to help.

“If you need help, I’ll search too!”
“Really? That’d be great.”
“It’s no trouble at all!”

She rolled up her sleeves and clenched a fist with enthusiasm.

“Then check the Study. We’ll keep looking around here.”
“Okaaay~ Leave it to me! I’ll definitely find it!”

At my request, the girl scampered off to search for the watch.

“Hmm-hmm, hmm-hmm♪”

She even hummed happily as she went.
Only after she’d completely disappeared did we finally relax.

“Phew. That was close.”

Meanwhile, Kang Se-rim, apparently furious at being gagged, growled like a vicious Chihuahua and bit down hard on my hand.

“Aagh!”
“Why the hell did you suddenly cover my mouth?! You wanna fucking die…?”
“I had no choice. Why were you about to mention the corpse?”

Ow, that hurt.
She really bit hard.
The back of my hand throbbed.
I explained my reasoning to the still-fuming Kang Se-rim.

“We absolutely can’t let her know we’re suspicious. We need to act like we’re about to leave.”
“Why?”
“Because the corpse disappeared.”

A clue that had been sitting there moments ago had vanished. There was only one person who could plausibly do something like that.

“I’m sure she did it. She used her authority as Administrator to move the corpse somewhere else.”
“That little brat?”

She had deliberately hidden the corpse so we couldn’t investigate its condition.

“She’s hiding something. There’s still another secret we haven’t uncovered.”

Having already died once, I was certain. Kang Se-rim frowned as she wondered what the girl might be hiding.

“Then I guess the corpse didn’t die by hanging?”
“…Probably. There’s a good chance someone murdered him.”

Marks on the back of the neck were structurally incompatible with a hanging suicide.

“If the Mansion owner was murdered, that creates a contradiction…”
“Right. She told us her father took his own life to end the deal.”

That contradicted the conclusion from our discussion. The entire motive no longer fit.

“Then which one is true?”
“Isn’t it obvious? One of the two is lying.”

Lee Sa-hyuk and the girl.
One of them had given false testimony.

“…”

Meanwhile, Lee Sa-hyuk looked thoroughly displeased. He’d clearly thought everything was over, only for more work to appear.
He was already stressed from not being able to smoke. Now that the situation had become more complicated, he looked ready to die from the inconvenience alone.

“…Actually, I lied. Let’s just leave.”
“Like hell you did.”
“I think Sa-hyuk is probably telling the truth…”

I nodded.
The one who had lied was none other than the girl.
She was hiding something behind that innocent, cheerful smile.
That was probably the Mansion’s final secret.

“If she realizes we know, there’s no telling when she’ll turn on us. For now, let’s pretend we haven’t noticed anything.”
“So that’s why you stopped me from mentioning the corpse?”

Kang Se-rim finally understood.
We’d barely managed to bluff our way through earlier. Just in case, I gave Gyeong-ah another instruction.

“Gyeong-ah, take off your watch and hide it somewhere securely under your clothes.”
“All right…!”

She hurriedly removed the watch and tucked it deep inside her shirt beneath her uniform.

“This should be enough to hide it, right?”
“Just be careful what you say. Better yet, don’t talk unless you have to…”
“What? Wasn’t I natural?”

Was she seriously asking?
She was overflowing with confidence despite being a terrible actress. Thank God she’d become a police officer instead.
“Gyeong-ah, I think you chose the right career.”
“What is that supposed to mean?!”

Her terrible acting made me nervous, but there was nothing else to do. We resumed our investigation of the Mansion.

“Now we need to figure out what she’s hiding.”
“Fuck. I don’t even know where to start…”

Honestly, I still had trouble believing it.
Everything we’d seen from her so far had been youthful and innocent.
She’d cried over the deaths of her family and confessed that she’d spend the rest of her life atoning.

‘Was all of that a lie…?’

The thought left a bitter taste in my mouth. Still, it was too early to jump to conclusions.
We wouldn’t know until we dug deeper, so we headed somewhere we might find firmer evidence.

“Let’s start with the daughter’s room.”

**

The Mansion owner’s daughter’s room was as different from the Mansion’s eerie atmosphere as ever.
Everything about it was bright and girlish. Gyeong-ah looked around with curiosity.

“This is that girl’s room, right?”
“Yeah. This is where we found the Medical Report.”
“This room looks exactly like something she’d come up with.”

Kang Se-rim grumbled as she looked over the elaborate decorations.

“If she’s hiding something… there’s a good chance she hid it in her own room.”

The room’s owner was currently in the Study.
She was diligently searching for the precious gift clumsy Gyeong-ah had supposedly lost.
This was the perfect chance to search the empty room. Kang Se-rim, however, was skeptical.

“If she got rid of the corpse in the Bedroom, wouldn’t she have cleared out anything suspicious in here too?”

At that exact moment,
a doll sitting on a shelf suddenly fell to the floor.

“…Scared the shit out of me.”

Kang Se-rim flinched and picked it up. It was the stuffed animal I’d noticed first when we originally entered the room.

‘Wasn’t that doll on the bed before?’

Something felt wrong.
Lee Sa-hyuk and Gyeong-ah hadn’t been here before, and Kang Se-rim… simply hadn’t paid much attention to the room.

“Give me that doll.”
“Here.”

Feeling suspicious, I examined it.

An ordinary stuffed doll.
Soft and squishy.
No matter how I tried interacting with it, the system insisted it wasn’t an item or anything special.
An ordinary doll?

‘No way…’

My memory was accurate.
The doll had moved.
And it had fallen to the floor on its own without anyone touching it.
Was this Toy Story?
Then it happened.

Snap-

The doll’s stitches suddenly snapped apart. Its stuffed fabric split open.

“Whoa…!”
“D-Did you tear it open?”
“No. It just…”

The sudden event left us scrambling. The doll tore open, spilling its stuffing everywhere.
The rabbit doll hung in tatters.
Then I noticed something small and shiny inside.

“…It’s a key.”
“What?!”

A key to somewhere in the Mansion had been hidden inside an ordinary doll.
I was dumbfounded.
The thing had been sitting there doing nothing, then suddenly burst open and handed us a clue.

“The marking on the body of the key says ‘Attic.’”
“Attic?”

Was there even an attic in this Mansion?
We hadn’t seen one anywhere during our investigation.
Kang Se-rim scratched her head.

“There was a place like that?”
“First I’ve heard of it too. Gyeong-ah?”
“I’m not sure either…”

She had just shaken her head when something suddenly seemed to occur to her.

“Ah! Could that have been…?”
“Do you know where it might be?”

Looking slightly embarrassed, she recalled something from earlier.

“It happened when I first woke up in the Mansion and hid in a closet for a ‘little while’ because I was alone…”
“Okay.”
“Don’t laugh!”
“Sorry for interrupting. Ignore me and keep going.”
“Seriously, you…”

After barely placating her, I listened carefully.

“Back then, I faintly heard a strange sound from the ceiling.”
“From the ceiling?”
“Yes. It sounded like someone was moving above it. I might have imagined it, though…”

Had extreme fear made her hear things?
That was possible, but given the circumstances, it was more likely she’d actually heard something.

“Show us where. Let’s check it out right now.”

The decision was easy.
We immediately headed to the place Gyeong-ah described.
It was at the end of a secluded corridor tucked far away from the center of the Mansion.

“How much farther?”
“We’re almost there. That room waaay over there.”

This place was ridiculously far.
After walking for what felt like forever, we reached the outer section of the Mansion.
The surroundings suddenly became shabby and plain.

“Is this even the same place? Why does it look like this?”
“The earlier area was probably the main house. This looks like an annex where the servants stayed.”

We reached the end of the corridor.
Looking around, I spotted a large full-length mirror.
It reflected the four of us in the light.

‘My face…’

No matter how many times I saw Kim Yohan’s face, I couldn’t get used to it.
It still looked like someone else, startling me every time.
This time was no different.
It felt awkward, like forcing myself into clothes that didn’t fit.
As I stared at my reflection,

“Huh?”
“What is it?”

I noticed a series of shallow scratches across the mirror.
They were spaced at regular intervals.

“Look at this. Someone deliberately scratched the mirror.”
“You’re right. It looks like someone clawed at it on purpose…”

These weren’t ordinary scratches from daily use. I ran my hands along the mirror and felt around the frame.
At the edge, something felt off. There was a narrow groove deep enough for my fingers to slip into.

‘What if I pull this way…?’

I gripped it and pulled. The mirror slid aside like a sliding door.

Slide-

There was a space behind the mirror.
A hidden spiral staircase was revealed.
An unexpected secret passage.

“Crazy… You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“Why is there a staircase hidden behind a mirror…?”
“We’ll find out if we go up.”

We slowly climbed the stairs.
Before long, we reached a locked door near the ceiling.

…The Attic.

I inserted the key we’d just found. It fit perfectly, and the lock clicked open.

“We found it. This is the Attic.”
“This place is fucking creepy. How were we supposed to find this?”

With Kang Se-rim grumbling beside us, we entered.
The low ceiling greeted us first. It was so low that we had to bend at the waist just to get inside.
Even Kang Se-rim, the shortest of us, had to lower her head.
Her head, not her waist.

“Hey. You just thought something weird, didn’t you?”
“Not at all.”
“Asshole… You’re acting suspicious.”

Was she psychic?
I casually looked away and surveyed the Attic.
The space was so cramped it was difficult even to stand. Everything about the room was shabby and miserable.
Looking closer, however, I found some unexpected things.
A crude makeshift bed made from layers of rags and mats.
Worn clothes patched together from scraps of fabric…
There were unmistakable signs that someone had lived here.

“Oh my… Did someone really live in a place like this…?”

Something bothered me. I ran my palm across the bed.

‘It’s clean?’

Despite being ragged and worn, there was no dust. It looked as though someone had used it until recently.

“Don’t tell me this room…”

A strange sense of dread crept over me. Then I spotted a notebook lying in the corner.
It was within reach, so I picked it up almost unconsciously.
A message appeared.

I’d acquired an item.
It looked like an ordinary diary.
Its owner was unknown, and the cover was torn and badly worn.
But I instinctively knew this was no ordinary clue.
An ominous feeling hung over it.
What kind of clue could make me feel this uneasy?
After a moment’s hesitation, I opened the diary and began to read.
Its cheerful opening immediately drew me in.

[Month X, Day XX]

Today, the Head Maid taught me how to clean!