Floor 2 - Mansion (11)

**

Footsteps slowly climbed the stairs. Having made my decision, I hurriedly spoke to Gyeong-ah.

“Gyeong-ah, draw your gun.”
“H-Huh…?!”

Caught off guard by the urgency, Han Gyeong-ah fumbled in confusion.
But it was already too late.
A dark shadow stretched across the entrance to the Attic.

“Wow, found you!”

The girl peeked her head inside, then popped into view with a cheerful flourish.

“I was wondering where you’d gone… You’re all here!”

Her tone was the same as always.
She greeted us with the same bright, lively energy as ever.
Only now, it felt strangely unfamiliar.
The girl lowered her head with a disappointed expression.

“I’m sorry. I searched the Study really hard, but unfortunately, I couldn’t find your watch…”

So she’d really been searching the Study like I’d asked.
Of course she hadn’t found the watch.
The supposedly lost item was hidden beneath Gyeong-ah’s clothes.

And yet…
She didn’t ask a single question about how we’d ended up in the Attic.
She acted as though she’d simply happened across us in passing.
That very naturalness felt deeply unnatural.

She already knew.

I glanced around.
Han Gyeong-ah still looked unsure what was happening, while Kang Se-rim frowned warily.
And Lee Sa-hyuk… was yawning sleepily. Alongside the others, I tensely faced the girl.

‘How much longer?’

I signaled Gyeong-ah with my eyes.
After a brief hesitation, she finally reached for her weapon.

“Don’t move!”

Click-!

With a sharp warning, she drew her handgun and aimed it. For the first time, she looked genuinely dependable.

She really was a cop.

But instead of looking startled or frightened, the girl’s eyes lit up when she saw Gyeong-ah’s handgun.

“Eek! What’s that?! That thing looks so cool!”

She reacted with pure curiosity.
Apparently, she came from an era where she had no idea what a handgun was.
That was unexpected.

“What do we do now?”
“It’s not even intimidating her…”

With no other choice, we deployed our most advanced weapon. Kang Se-rim rolled up her sleeves and raised a fist.

“Hey. Start talking, and tell the truth.”
“Eek!”

It was super effective.
Overwhelmed by her aggression, the girl shrank back and began trembling.

“W-Why are you doing this…?”
“Don’t play dumb. You’ve been lying to us from the start.”

Kang Se-rim confronted her directly. The girl flinched as though she’d been struck right where it hurt.
It lasted only an instant.
She quickly regained her composure and returned to her usual expression, but she couldn’t fool me.

‘She’s shaken.’

She was hiding something.
Whatever it was, it had to be the truth she desperately wanted concealed.
The game wasn’t over yet.
This was an extension of the discussion.
The truth we’d reached the first time had been nothing but a lie.
It had all been part of a scheme to lure us into a trap.
The final clue proved it.
Only one step remained before we reached the real truth.
It was time to end this.

I presented the evidence to the girl.
The diary containing the past recorded by someone who had lived in the Mansion.

“…”

The instant she saw the diary, all the color drained from her face.
She froze, visibly shaken and unable to hide her panic.

“…You read it?”

I nodded. The girl’s expression turned resigned.
That was practically an admission.

She had lied to us.
The conclusion from our discussion had been wrong.
And so I exposed the final secret hidden within the Mansion.

“You wrote this diary, didn’t you?”

She didn’t answer.
It wasn’t really a question anyway, so I continued.

“You weren’t the Mansion owner’s daughter. You were a maid who worked in this Mansion.”

She wasn’t the Mansion owner’s daughter. She was a maid who had admired and envied the Young Lady.
The story about the Mansion owner making a deal to save his daughter was a lie.
The girl had been a maid of the Mansion, a completely separate person from the daughter.

“If you’ve come this far, I suppose there’s no reason to hide it anymore…”

As if confirming my answer, she reluctantly nodded and confessed the truth.

“You’re right, honored guests. I’m not Master’s daughter.”

The secret she’d hidden all this time finally came to light. The cold air in the Mansion seemed to grow heavier.

A wealthy man’s daughter and a maid.
The lives of the two girls couldn’t have been more different.
An insurmountable wall of status stood between them.
And so the maid admired and yearned for the Young Lady’s life.
At first, she had simply looked up to her from afar.
But as time passed and more things happened, that admiration gradually turned into envy and jealousy.
Before long, she desperately wished to become the Young Lady herself. It was all laid bare in her diary.
And the deal mentioned in the final entry…

The answer was obvious.
The person who made the deal wasn’t the Mansion owner. It was the maid.
The story about a father making a terrible choice to save his sick daughter had been a complete fabrication.
The truth was that the maid, consumed by jealousy toward the sickly Young Lady, had stolen the identity of the Mansion owner’s daughter.

“I hated the Young Lady for hating me… and I envied her for having everything I didn’t.”

The girl’s fingertips trembled violently as she clutched her skirt.
Kang Se-rim crossed her arms and responded bluntly.

“So you took it from her.”
“You may not believe me, but I refused at first. But then one day, I overheard Master talking…”

She trailed off. She didn’t need to say what she’d overheard for me to guess.

‘The terminal prognosis.’

It must have been the day the Mansion owner’s daughter was given a terminal prognosis.
The Young Lady would die soon, so perhaps the maid had thought she could take her empty place.
Something along those lines.
Was that what the torn page Gyeong-ah had found really meant?
I recalled the first torn diary fragment we’d obtained.

For the one I love, I could do anything. Even if it meant paying any price…

The love mentioned there hadn’t been a father’s love for his daughter. It had been ordinary unrequited love.
She had only wanted happiness.
But the maid gave in to temptation and made the wrong choice.
She cast aside her identity as a maid and became the Mansion owner’s daughter.
That was the final secret hidden within the Mansion.

“And in the end, you found out so easily…”

The moment we uncovered the truth, a quest completion message appeared.

Flash-!

Unlike before, the system itself announced the end of the game.
We’d finally uncovered the real truth. And yet something still felt wrong.
The final message had come out of nowhere.

‘It isn’t over until it’s over?’

There were still plenty of unanswered questions.
But the girl suddenly began rushing as though something were chasing her.

“I’m sorry for deceiving you, honored guests. It was part of the game’s rules, so I had no choice…”

She hurriedly held out a key.
Unlike the previous one, this was a golden key with a jewel set into its center.

This time, the system message appeared unmistakably.
This one was real.

“The game is over. You can leave through the front door now. I’m not lying this time…!”

She urgently pushed us to leave, pleading with us as though desperate.

“Go, hurry! You have to leave! Right now…!”

She looked anxious and frantic.
Her sudden change in behavior felt deeply unsettling.
Why was she acting like this all of a sudden?
She seemed desperate to get us out as quickly as possible.

‘What is she so afraid of…?’

Then it happened.
The girl’s already agitated face went deathly pale. Suddenly, she coughed up blood.

“Cough!”

Bright red blood streamed from the corner of her mouth. It happened without any warning.
Everyone froze in shock.

“Are you okay?!”

Gyeong-ah instinctively moved toward her, but the girl thrust out a hand to stop her.

“N-No…! You have to run…!”

She was more concerned about us than herself. Her eyes were filled with terror and despair.
Then an unsettling voice echoed through the Attic.

[Who said you could?]

It was a low tone I’d never heard before.
I flinched involuntarily.
What was this voice…?

[You’re really going to end it like this? Have you lost your mind?]
[Looks like you think you’re some champion of justice.]

The voice was grotesque and ominous, whispering accusations without pause.

[You brought this on yourself. You started all of it.]
[And now you’re giving up? Don’t make me laugh.]
[Everyone died because of you. Do you even have a conscience?]
[You couldn’t even kill four people, so you pulled some stupid stunt…]
[You always have to make things worse when everything would be fine if you just stayed put.]
[You think I don’t know you let those four go yesterday?]
[You’ve always been like this. You can’t do a single thing right.]
[Stupidly tripping and breaking a plate… Do you even know how valuable that was? It’s something someone as lowly as you could never hope to own.]
[And after I forgave you, you even tried to take what was mine, you ungrateful bitch…]
[I took in a girl who would’ve spent her whole life rotting in the slums selling her body, and you still don’t know your place.]
[Enough. I don’t need you anymore. Just disappear.]

Someone was berating the girl and pouring vicious abuse onto her. The words were almost too vile to repeat.
And they were coming from the girl’s own mouth.
She muttered eerily to herself as though she’d lost control.
Her condition was deteriorating fast.
She looked ready to collapse at any moment. Sensing murderous intent, I immediately shouted to Gyeong-ah.

“Gyeong-ah, shoot!”

But we were already too late.
The floor beneath us cracked apart and collapsed.

“Kyaa!”

We helplessly fell along with everyone else, crashing down into the corridor we’d passed through earlier.

“Fuck, what now…?”

Kang Se-rim staggered to her feet.
Fortunately, the ceiling hadn’t been very high, so none of us were badly hurt. I looked up and met the girl’s eyes.

Her gaze was completely different now. It radiated unmistakable malice.
As though she’d become someone else.

No, maybe it was the opposite…

This was the Mansion owner’s daughter.
The girl who had received a terminal prognosis and should have died long ago.
Somehow, her personality had remained, and now she had seized control.
Her original demeanor was completely different from the one we’d seen until now.
She wiped the blood from her mouth and looked down on us contemptuously.

[I should’ve done this from the start.]

Apparently, she had no intention of letting us leave peacefully.
I fiddled with the Front Door Key we’d just received.

‘Was that why she gave us this…?’

I finally understood why the maid had been so desperate for us to leave.
Had she been trying to save us?
The decision was immediate.
I raised my voice and shouted to everyone.

“Everyone, run for the entrance.”

Rumble-!

The Mansion shook violently.
The entire building convulsed as though an earthquake had struck, trying to prevent us from reaching the entrance.

“This is fucking insane…!”

Kang Se-rim stared at the absurd spectacle in disbelief.
Gyeong-ah was terrified, but she started running anyway.

“A-Are you sure we can get out if we reach the entrance?!”

Honestly, I couldn’t guarantee it.
But what other choice did we have?
We had to bet on it.
This Front Door Key was the genuine article recognized by the system.
That was all I could trust.

And so we took off running blindly through the corridor.
It was time for the inevitable chase scene every game had to have.