False Accusation (3)

“Ugh.”

The bitter cold woke me up, and my eyes opened on their own.
No alarm necessary.
What a wonderfully comfortable place.

Somehow, I’d managed to survive another night. I greeted the refreshing morning with the groan of a dying man.

Not that I actually knew whether it was morning. It was just that gloomy down here.
The basement was damp and sinister. Assuming it was probably morning, I hauled my stiff body upright.

“Ow, ow…”

After spending the night on the hard floor, my back ached.
Every time I moved, my joints screamed in protest.

Ding-!
Right on cue, the elevator arrived. I didn’t even have to look to know who it was.

“Good morning.”

Han Gyeong-ah greeted me bright and early with a refreshingly gloomy good morning.
The righteous police officer had come to keep watch over a lowly criminal.
I was so overwhelmed by the honor that I hardly knew what to do with myself.

“You really don’t have to come down here.”
“As if.”

How had things ended up like this? It had all started yesterday.
After declaring that she would keep watch over me, Han Gyeong-ah had genuinely camped out beside my cell all day.
When I asked when she planned on leaving,

“When it’s time to sleep, I’ll go back up to Floor 1, then come down again first thing tomorrow morning.”

she said that, and then actually stayed until late at night.
At first, I’d assumed it was just something she’d said in passing…
but she seriously intended to keep this up until the rescue team arrived.

‘Why is she so damn persistent…?’

I slowly ate the breakfast Han Gyeong-ah handed me. Today’s menu was hard bread, same as yesterday.

“No strawberry jam?”
“I forgot.”

I barely managed to crunch my way through it. I thought my jaw was going to fall off.
As an aside, apparently the food in the hotel restaurant on Floor 1 was freshly laid out at every mealtime.

No one knew how it worked. It was probably some ability of the Tower.
This place was surrounded by secrets and mysteries.
Trying to apply reality and logic to it was a fool’s game.
Anyway, even after another day, my situation hadn’t changed.

Sit still and stare at the wall.
I wasted time doing absolutely nothing, cooped up underground. Even that got unbearable after ten minutes, so I gave up.

I was bored to death.
Meanwhile, Han Gyeong-ah sat in a chair reading a book.
When I’d asked yesterday, she’d said there was a library on Floor 1 too.
She’d brought down a desk, a chair, and even a small desk lamp.
Apparently, she planned to keep an eye on me while sitting there reading.

“Is it really okay for you to stay down here?”

I made an effort to start a conversation, only to be casually ignored. Han Gyeong-ah focused on her book as though she’d plugged her ears.

“Hey, Gyeong-ah?”
“…”
“I’ve got something to ask.”
“…”
“Could you at least look over here?”

Was she seriously planning to ignore me completely?
Then the cover of the book she was reading caught my eye.

Surprisingly, it was a mystery novel.
More specifically, it was a mystery built around a speculative premise.
Maybe it was just her personal taste, but apparently we had something in common.

I’d even read the book myself before.
The premise was so niche that there probably weren’t many people who’d read it.
Finding that oddly fascinating, I spoke without thinking much of it.

“Oh, that book’s good.”
“…”
“The final twist was pretty shocking.”

Flinch.
Her fingers froze halfway through turning the page. She immediately resumed, but not fast enough to escape my notice.
Was she sensitive about spoilers?
I decided to poke at her a little more and see if I could get a clearer reaction.

“Gyeong-ah, did you know?”
“…”
“In that book, the heroine who’s been traveling with the protagonist since the beginning is actually-”

Glare.
A murderous look stabbed into me.
At this rate, she’d start shooting lasers from her eyes.

Still, mission accomplished. I’d finally managed to provoke a meaningful response.

Han Gyeong-ah let out a deep sigh and closed her book.
Wouldn’t it have been nice if she’d just done that from the start?

“…What do you want?”
“Nothing much. I was just curious about something.”

Only Chapter 1 of ‘Tower Death Game’ had ever been released.
So I had no idea how the story would unfold from here.
I was completely in the dark.
If I wanted to deal with whatever came next, I needed to understand the situation.
Even if I was stuck helplessly inside an underground prison.

“Is it really okay for you to stay here? What about Floor 1?”
“It’s fine. I’ve asked the others to handle the investigation.”

Han Gyeong-ah answered casually. Since I was one of the abductees too, she readily gave me the information.

According to her, everyone except her was currently investigating Floor 1.

Apparently, they gathered every morning and evening to share the results of their investigation.
They’d built a remarkably organized system in just one day.
It was probably something she’d come up with herself as the group’s leader.

“Did you find anything on Floor 1? An exit, clues, anything like that?”
“…No.”

Unfortunately, there was no exit. They hadn’t found any clues either.
Not much progress.
Han Gyeong-ah frowned, clearly aware of that herself.

“It doesn’t matter. A rescue team will be here soon.”

I wouldn’t be so sure…
Like I’d said before, rescue teams were mythical Pokémon.
I decided to feel her out with a question.

“What are you going to do if the rescue team never comes?”
“That’s extremely unlikely. This is an unprecedented kidnapping incident in the history of South Korea.”

She was brimming with confidence. Her head was genuinely full of flowers.

“By now, the whole country must be in an uproar. The government would have already organized a rescue team.”
“You never know. What if the terrorists have influence beyond what the government can handle?”
“That couldn’t…”

She started to argue, then hesitated.
Apparently, the question required more thought than she’d expected, because she fell silent for a while.

“If… and I don’t think it’s possible, but if something like that did happen… then we’d have to make a decision.”

A decision.
So she’d finally accept reality once things reached that point. Maybe her head wasn’t completely full of flowers after all.

“Don’t waste your time thinking about things like that. The rescue team will come. If only so I can put you before the law.”
“Sure. Good luck with that.”

And with that warm exchange of well wishes, our conversation came to an end.
For some reason, she seemed a little less guarded than yesterday.
Han Gyeong-ah tilted her head with an uncertain look.

“You are the same person, right?”
“…What?”
“The way you talk, the way you act… You somehow seem different.”

She’d hit the nail on the head from an angle I hadn’t expected. Was this some police officer’s intuition kicking in?

Without even realizing it, she’d noticed the change in me. For the record, Kim Yohan was the kind of piece of shit no sane person would want anything to do with.

I’d tried to imitate him by acting like a thug, but apparently I couldn’t quite reproduce his particular brand of human garbage.

“…I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Well, maybe you really did have a change of heart. Just pretend I didn’t say anything.”

Phew.
She let it go without suspicion.
Of course she did. How was anyone supposed to realize I was literally a different person?
If she were capable of making that kind of leap, she’d have given up on the rescue team already.
Thank God Han Gyeong-ah was a level-headed realist and an idiot.

“If I said I really had a change of heart, would you let me out?”
“Not at all. You’re in there because you’re paying for what you’ve done. You should give up on that fantasy.”

Not a shred of mercy.
And so another day passed, just like the one before it. I was still trapped on B1.

“Yaaawn…”

Another refreshingly gloomy morning. Once again, my eyes opened automatically.
I’d been wandering on the brink of death in my dream and woke up just before I died.

I’d dreamed I was stranded deep in snowy mountains, freezing to death.
Feeling the cold seep all the way into my bones, I pushed my aching body upright.

They say humans are creatures of adaptation, and even this underground life that had been torture at first was starting to feel familiar.
It was already my third day since ending up inside ‘Tower Death Game.’

I wanted to put an ‘already’ in front of that, but remembering the last two days made me think better of it.
If you thought I was being dramatic because it had only been a few days, you’d be sorely mistaken.

That was how mind-numbingly dull it was. Being trapped in the same place for dozens of hours really could drive a person insane.
I understood that down to my bones. I glanced toward the corridor.

“She should be here by now.”

I pressed my head against the bars and waited for Han Gyeong-ah. But no matter how long I waited, there was no sign of her.

Did she oversleep?
That didn’t sound like her.
Han Gyeong-ah was meticulous and exacting about everything. Yesterday, she’d rushed down the moment morning came.

“What’s taking her so long?”

By now, she should have been down here with her eyes peeled, checking to see if anything had changed since yesterday.

“Well, she’ll come if I wait.”

But Han Gyeong-ah never appeared that entire day.

Not the next day either,
nor the day after that.

And before I knew it, three days had passed.

Drip.
Drip, drip.

“…”

How much time had passed?
The sound of water dripping from the ceiling woke me.

The moment I came to, throbbing agony swept through my entire body.
I’d practically passed out rather than fallen asleep, and my head pounded.
Even so, every sensation coursing through my body was painfully clear.

“I’m hungry…”

A savage hunger surged through me from head to toe, accompanied by maddening thirst.

My mouth was bone-dry, as though I’d been dropped in the middle of a desert.
I felt like I was dying.

My mind was awake, but I didn’t have the strength to get up. Even lying still, exhaustion washed over me.
I lay sprawled like a corpse on the freezing floor, barely breathing.

With difficulty, I turned my head toward the bars. There was still no sign of Han Gyeong-ah.
The abandoned chair and book in the corridor were the only proof she’d been here just a few days ago.

It was already the fourth day.
B1 was completely empty. Only a cold silence lingered.
Locked inside the underground prison, I’d gone without food or water.

For four whole days, I hadn’t eaten or drunk a thing. Even lying still, the hunger was unbearable.

“Ugh…”

My cracked throat burned, parched beyond belief.
If this were a survival game, wouldn’t warnings like ‘Dehydration!’ and ‘Starvation!’ be popping up right about now?

I wasn’t exaggerating. I genuinely felt like I was going to die. But there was no food or water here.

“Gyeong-ah? I think I’ve reflected enough by now… I know you’re hiding somewhere, so how about coming out?”

Maybe I really was losing my mind.
The symptoms had started two days ago.
Several times a day, I’d hear the phantom ding! of the elevator arriving.
Then the moment I focused on it, the sound would vanish as if it had never existed.
Even now, part of me imagined Han Gyeong-ah hiding somewhere across the corridor with food in her hands.

“Even the hard bread is fine. I won’t complain this time… Please, just give me something to eat…”

A weak chuckle escaped me at my own flimsy, pathetic imagination. Somehow, I’d sunk to her level.

If we had one thing in common, it was that both our heads were full of flowers.
Today. She’d come today…
I slowly closed my eyes and emptied my mind. And once again, I waited. And waited.

And so I…

Thud.

“Gasp!”

My consciousness snapped back.
My vision sharpened, and awareness flooded back all at once.

Before me was the underground prison steeped in bone-chilling cold, a cramped, enclosed space barely seven square meters in size.

The same sight I’d grown used to.
But something was strange.
The hunger was gone.
The starvation that had tormented me around the clock had vanished.
So had the terrible thirst that had felt like swallowing a handful of sand.

“…?”

Was I dreaming?
No. Everything was too vivid.
As I stood frozen in bewilderment, a message appeared before my eyes.

Tutorial…?
Then a long block of text unfurled before me.

“What the…”

I blinked stupidly, unable to believe what I was seeing.

Ding-!
A bright, cheerful chime pierced my ears from somewhere.
Soon, footsteps echoed from beyond the corridor.

There was no mistaking who it was.
A neatly worn police uniform came into view.

“You seem to be doing well.”

…It was Han Gyeong-ah.