episode_0173

—

[Sun Hotel Precautions]

1. The hotel has already ceased operation.

1-1. If you enter the hotel by any means, you must evacuate before the end of the day.

2. The only way to escape the hotel is to head to the rooftop.

3. You must choose a hotel room on each floor and go up the floor only after completing the mission.

3-1. If you break this, two more floors will appear and you will never be able to escape.

5. Once again, the Sun Hotel is a discontinued hotel. No staff are employed.

—

“What is this…?”

“Have you heard of the Neapolitan ghost story?”

“Oh, I know. I showed up for the exam.”

“…I see.”

In a world where exorcist certification exists, it seems that types of ghost stories are also included in the exam.

Still, it doesn’t seem like you can recognize it right away just because it appears on the test.

Sophia seemed to have no idea about this strange ghost story until I told her.

I also only know that ghost stories that roughly follow this type of rule belong to Neapolitan ghost stories.

I remembered this because when I looked at SNS, ghost stories like this would suddenly appear through the algorithm.

Sophia, who lives in the world of ghost stories, would never look at such SNS.

“Isn’t this very strange? Why do I have to go to the rooftop to escape… There is no rule number 4…”

“That’s Neapolitan.”

“This…?”

Actually, I didn’t know much either.

Still, I vaguely remember that most Neapolitan ghost stories are like this.

It’s somewhat uneasy and scary, but it doesn’t tell us exactly what’s scary.

In some ways, it was a very unfriendly horror genre.

“Phew…”

I sighed.

Since the hotel was the host, I had no idea where to begin the exorcism.

It was impossible to destroy the entire hotel, and there was no way to know what would happen if they were forcibly destroyed.

All I could do was follow the rules provided by the ghost story.

“This is Neapolitan…”

“…I’ll take a quick look around.”

Still, I seem to understand it better than Sophia, so I think I should take the lead.

While Sophia studied the rules carefully, I immediately started looking at the doors on the first floor.

There was a letter written in front of the door.

“Blood room?”

Names and conditions were written on the front door.

In the case of the blood room, you had to go in and donate a certain amount of blood.

I wanted blood as much as half a paper cup.

I felt bad about wanting that strangely ambiguous amount of blood.

It was the same in the other room.

“Tiger’s room, hunger room, hallucination room…”

They were all rooms with eerie conditions written on them.

I stroked my chin as I slowly read the terms.

It looked like a room with better conditions than the blood room.

“What is written in the room?”

“Read it.”

“Ma, that’s ridiculous! This is ”

Sophia panicked and walked up to the entrance and shook the door.

But the door did not move.

I followed suit and tried to shake it with a bit of force, but it didn’t budge as if it was blocked by something huge.

I looked through several doors and stopped in front of one door.

“Well, let’s just go up! Everything on this floor makes no sense!”

“What if the next floor is the same?”

“Well, that’s…”

Sophia couldn’t answer.

It will be so.

Because no one can know what the next floor will be like.

So even more so, I had to pass this floor to prevent the floor from increasing.

And in my opinion, there were many rooms worth trying.

For example, this room in front of me may not be visible to other people, but to me…

“Stay here for a moment.”

Leaving Sophia behind, I went inside the door.

***

After leaving those short words, the man, Seonghan, entered the room.

“Now, wait a minute!”

I went in alone without consulting anyone.

I hurriedly ran over and tried to grab the closing door handle, but…

thud!

The door closed with just one step.

Clap, clap.

No matter how hard I tried to force the closed doorknob to turn, it wouldn’t budge.

I looked up to see what kind of room I had entered, and there was bloody writing written there.

“Ho, the tiger’s room…”

Personally, it was one of the most absurd rooms.

The mission of this room was to go inside the room and spend an hour with a hungry tiger.

If I was lucky, time might pass without incident, but being trapped in this small hotel room with a starving tiger was not going to be easy.

Maybe that’s what I was thinking.

“Perhaps… give up everything…”

Could it be that he gave up on life because he couldn’t overcome the fear of ghost stories?

That wasn’t that strange.

A large proportion of the victims of ghost stories are people who end their own lives.

Thinking about that made my body tremble.

I never thought being left alone in this hotel would be this scary.

My legs lost strength and I collapsed on the floor in the hallway.

” Mr. Hwan…”

I don’t know why I thought of Hwan now.

In reality, I couldn’t even say anything, but I always felt comfortable with him in my heart.

Now I was muttering his name in my voice.

Kkeikikㅡ.

And the door opened.

“…Huh?”

“What are you doing?”

“Yes? No, how…?”

Seonghan’s voice came through the wide open door.

When I raised my head, I saw the man’s face.

“Aaaah!”

And I screamed at the sight.

I didn’t scream at his face.

I myself do not do such rude things.

Just because the man’s face and arms were covered in blood, he naturally screamed.

“Blood, blood…”

“It’s not mine.”

Seonghan pointed around the room with his hand.

While sitting down, I craned my head to the side and looked into the room.

“Huh…”

The tiger was dead.

With my chest pierced.

At that moment, the image of that ghost story came to mind.

That ghost story of someone lying on the floor with his chest pierced.

“If that were to be considered, it would be a ghost story, but why is there blood…”

Seonghan grumbled and went into the public bathroom in the hallway.

As I continued to look at Tiger’s corpse, I became somewhat scared and followed Seonghan’s footsteps.

“…This is the men’s restroom…”

“Oh, I know. You’re just cleaning up the blood anyway…”

“Haha. The tiger corpse was a bit scary, wasn’t it?”

“Oh, no…”

The man laughed, teasing himself, and started washing his face.

I was a little angry at being made fun of, so I looked at Seonghan with my arms crossed.

He was a strange man.

No matter how physically developed an exorcist was, no exorcist could defeat a ghost story or deal with a tiger.

It was not for nothing that ghost stories and scary stories were widely spread in ancient Joseon.

When ghost stories or scary stories arise, most culprits are identified as tigers.

An exorcist whose body has been strengthened to the point where he can take on real beasts that neither psychic powers nor exorcism work on.

I had never heard of it before.

And-

‘You did that for me, right?’

Without any consultation, he risked his life by entering the room and fighting the tiger.

Of course, it seemed like he had unilaterally defeated the tiger in a fight to the death.

Anyway, it wouldn’t have been an easy decision.

It must have been the man’s first time fighting a tiger.

Thinking like that, I suddenly felt grateful to the man.

“Phew.”

“…Did you wash everything? …Next time, we’ll have a conversation and decide – Why, why are you approaching me?”

“No, I was wondering if I could still smell blood, so let me smell it.”

“Okay, that’s okay. Take it upon yourself…”

“No, because the smell of blood really made my nose numb.”

The man asked as he approached.

Normally he would have refused, but in a way, he was a man who risked his life and entered the room for his own sake.

I couldn’t continue to refuse so strongly.

Plus, they say their nose became numb from the smell of blood…

There is no one who can help you but yourself…

“Ah, okay! Stand there.”

The man stopped at his words.

I took a deep breath and calmed my breathing a little.

I cautiously took a few steps and gently placed my nose against the man’s clothes.

The area where a little blood had splattered inevitably had an odor, but it wasn’t too bad, perhaps because it was washed off right away.

“What about your hands?”

“…”

Seonghan held out his hand and tried to smell it, but there was only a slightly strong smell of flesh, but no smell of blood.

It definitely smelled different from mine.

They were just smelling things, but for some reason, it felt like they were doing something bad because they were quietly smelling alone in the men’s bathroom.

“Oh, I’m not…”

There was no smell of blood.

Let’s speak in a low voice as if crawling on the floor.

Seonghan nodded and walked out of the bathroom.

“What are you doing? I have to leave within a day, so let’s go up quickly.”

“…Yes.”

Are you only conscious of yourself?

Even though I felt a little strangely annoyed by the appearance of a man who was so casual.

Because what he said was right, I followed Seonghan’s back and went up to the next floor.

It was the same after that.

Every time a door to fight something appeared, the man calmly entered.

Bears, killers, and unlikely hotel staff.

No matter how I looked at it, I went into a room that wasn’t meant to be woken up, cleared the mission in 1-2 minutes, and walked out.