‘What’s going on?’
Roy glanced around warily.
The second floor looked like a hospital ward. Dilapidated doors lined both sides of the hallway, and old pill bottles and trash littered the floor. Gwakhyeol seed relieved no fiends were here, but Roy felt the silence was ominous. Usually, dead quiet in a place like this is never a good sign.
Sure enough, the mont he took a step forward, a red warning light clicked on overhead.
“...!”
Gwakhyeol was about to scream, but Roy clamped a hand over his mouth.
‘I ❀ Nоvеlігht ❀ (Don’t copy, read here) nearly lost ten years of my life just now.’
Roy swallowed hard and peered up. Beyond the red glow, they saw a shadow not their own cast against the ceiling.
Shh. Roy’s eyes implored silence; Gwakhyeol nodded, jaw tense.
‘I think sothing’s on the stairwell above.’
They pressed close to the wall and crept up. Between the second- and third-floor landings, a fiend stood staring out a broken window.
‘Fuck.’
Had Gwakhyeol shrieked, they would’ve been eliminated. Roy pointed in silent warning; Gwakhyeol’s face went even paler.
‘I told you to stay safe.’
Roy clicked his tongue. Gwakhyeol shrugged helplessly.
‘But with a fiend there, we can’t use the stairs.’
Their plan stalled. Roy retreated half a flight and considered their options. Through the grimy window, he spotted two more fiends prowling outside.
“So they multiply when you kill one?”
That thought sent a chill through him. No wonder they were spawning. He was fortunate he had no offensive skills—otherwise he’d have slaughtered them all. Now, smashing heads again wasn’t trivial.
Just then, Gwakhyeol tapped his shoulder and whispered, pointing down the corridor to a faint green glow.
‘Ergency exit.’
Gwakhyeol mouthed: let’s go up the ergency stairs. Even if they dispatched the landing fiend and ascended, they might face an ambush on the way down—so avoiding them entirely was better. Roy nodded.
They changed direction toward the second-floor fire exit and moved quietly. At the corridor’s end, Roy sensed sothing—his heightened awareness detected danger.
‘Retreat! Retreat!’
He abruptly halted and beckoned Gwakhyeol back, but Gwakhyeol, having felt nothing, looked confused.
“Why?”
“Back!”
“But why?”
“If I say back, back!”
They argued in hushed, frantic whispers—then the hiss of rusty wheels echoed.
Creeeak, whee...
Squinting, Roy saw sothing slowly rolling toward them through the gloom.
‘A wheelchair...?’
A fiend in a wheelchair. Gwakhyeol covered his mouth with both hands, frozen in terror.
‘We need to go that way to reach the ergency stairs.’
He exhaled and dropped behind Roy, hiding under the landing. Roy pinpointed the fiend’s path: it rolled past the stairs toward the opposite corridor.
‘Now’s our chance.’
Roy hauled Gwakhyeol up and positioned him in front, then slipped past the wheelchair, staying close to the far wall.
‘I’ll be fine dodging it.’
He’d told Gwakhyeol to wait in the ergency exit—so Gwakhyeol should be safe inside. As long as Gwakhyeol stayed silent, the stairwell fiend wouldn’t venture away.
Roy pressed onward to the corridor’s end. There, he grasped at a rusty pipe—
“Why that?” Gwakhyeol whispered.
Shh. Roy pressed a finger to his lips. Then he crept behind the fiend and swung the pipe hard.
Whack!
The fiend collapsed without a cry. The only scream was Gwakhyeol’s.
“Yaaaaagh!”
Roy brushed pipe-blood from his cheek and smirked.
“It’d get annoying if we left it alive. Let’s go.”
“...Hic.”
He covered Gwakhyeol’s mouth as he hiccupped, then bolted for the ergency stairwell.
“Co on—!”
✧
The abandoned three-story building with a basent looked like any horror attraction in an amusent park. During Shooting Star’s heyday, they’d fild midnight ghost specials here and abroad every sumr—so Roy recognized the tropes. The difference now was that instead of people in ghost makeup, these were grotesque fiends mimicking humans.
‘I’d rather face ghosts.’
Roy hated gore—these zombie-like monsters were the worst. That was why his instinct was always to hit first.
“Alright, let’s open this.”
They aid to clear the third floor first, reasoning that descending from above would help them evade fiends.
Creak—
The iron door’s rusty shriek grated on his nerves. A choking stench—rotted at and mildew—stung his nostrils.
‘Even as fakes, they nailed the realism.’
Inside, a faded red wooden sign read:
[EDEN GARDENS]
Beyond it lay a half-destroyed reception desk, broken chairs, scattered syringes, and pharmaceuticals.
‘Sure enough, a hospital.’
Thud! Thud! Thud!
Roughly thirty ters on, a fiend pounded its head against a wall. Roy scanned their options: the fiend-guarded L-shaped stairs or the idling elevator.
‘No way I’m trusting that elevator.’
A modern lift in a decaying hospital by the front door—obvious trap. Ninety-percent chance a fiend guarded it. The stairs, though hazardous, were the safer route.
“Gwakhyeol.”
Roy motioned to the stairwell. Gwakhyeol pressed close, eyes determined. If Roy ordered, he’d charge any fiend.
Quietly, they dimd their flashlight and climbed. Cracked concrete debris made each step precarious.
But the second floor was eerily silent—no sign of fiends.
‘That’s strange...’
Roy paused, senses on high alert. The silence felt wrong.
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