Ch.113Snapshot (3)

Yoon stood there for a long time holding the phone.

Occasionally she would nod her head, or tilt it back as if her throat was tightening.

“Yeah. Nothing’s wrong. I’m the same as always.”

Indistinct words continued from the other end of the line.

“No~ I called from the hospital. Just wanted to see you.”

“…Yeah, yeah.”

It was probably her mother, asking her daughter how she was doing.

“I’ll come home sometime later.”

Those words delivered with a trembling voice.

With that final statement, Heo Yoon hung up the phone.

“Did the call go through?”

“Yeah. The connection was good.”

“Are you really going to visit your family home?”

It was an unnecessary question.

But I couldn’t just let it go.

This is exactly the time period where Heo Yoon lived. Exactly the area where she lived.

Of course, it’s just a point in space-time that someone has cut out, but it’s perfectly identical to reality.

“…”

Heo Yoon avoids answering.

“This isn’t reality. It’s just a point in space-time that’s been cut out, so the same time will keep repeating. I don’t know how much time they’ve cut out, but when it ends, it goes back to the beginning.”

“Oh? I didn’t know that.”

“Then… what are you planning to do?”

I ask nervously, like someone who owes something.

“I don’t know. Even if it’s not reality, I wonder if I should go see them once, or if I should stay here.”

After being trapped in a space where you don’t know when you might die, she now has a chance to meet her family.

It’s only natural that she’d want to go.

Yet I’m trying to stop her somehow.

What if Heo Yoon changes her mind after meeting her family?

What if she decides to stay here in this eternally repeating time?

Heo Yoon leans toward me.

With her hands on her knees, she lifts only her head to meet my eyes.

“Hey. Lim Dabin.”

Just hearing my name called made me flinch.

“Yes?”

“You look cute. Call me ‘unni’ once.”

The sudden request momentarily blanked my mind.

“Um, unni?”

“Once more.”

“Yoon unni?”

“That’s right.”

Tap.

A hand rests on top of my head.

“Lim Dabin, you’re family too. Same with Seok Hyunmin. If you told him to call, he’d say the same thing.”

Just like Serim unni would do.

Heo Yoon gently strokes my hair, then messes it up again as if embarrassed.

“And you. Are you crazy? Do you think I’d stay here?”

“Ah…”

“Let’s go.”

Heo Yoon dusts off her hands and strides ahead.

“What’s wrong? Aren’t you coming?”

“Just a moment.”

A street paved with purple and teal blocks.

Behind the plane trees in the distance, something flutters.

“Wait a moment.”

I walked toward it as if entranced.

A piece of cloth appeared briefly, then was hidden by trees.

Fluttering. Moving with the spring breeze.

“What is it? Something dangerous again?”

“…No. It’s not dangerous.”

It’s not dangerous.

I can tell that much just by looking.

This feels different.

Just approaching it makes me uneasy and gives me goosebumps, but it feels like I absolutely can’t pass by without checking it.

I unconsciously lowered my voice as I approached.

Past the street.

Past each tree, forward.

Even though I’m in the spring sunshine, my body feels cold.

The gentle breeze that felt pleasant before now makes me flinch.

A bright, crisp spring day.

Terror beneath it.

I realized I had unconsciously crossed my arms.

“What on earth is it?”

“It’s here.”

There was nothing at the spot we reached.

Just a large piece of cloth caught on a tree branch.

A red cloth flapping in the wind. Probably a torn t-shirt that someone hung there.

It’s just an ordinary piece of cloth, and even with a Librarian’s eyes, there’s nothing special about it.

“…I think I was mistaken.”

Maybe I’m just tired.

I’ve become too sensitive.

“Let’s go back.”

Just as I was about to turn around.

Heo Yoon grabbed me suddenly.

“What?!”

“No. Look carefully.”

Heo Yoon holds my wrist firmly and points to the tree with her other hand.

“There’s a knot tied on the branch. It didn’t just get caught in the wind by chance; someone climbed all the way up there and tied it.”

“Oh? You’re right. How did they get up there to tie it?”

The cloth is tied very high up.

Like a flag, as if trying to signal something.

Heo Yoon looks around, deep in thought.

“Dabin. Over there. Help me out.”

Heo Yoon heads toward a rusty hardware store on the inner side of the street.

Just an ordinary hardware store.

The shutters are down even in broad daylight, suggesting it’s been closed for a long time, but Heo Yoon seems to have sensed something there.

“When I count to three, lift the shutter. Got it?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. One, two, three!”

Rattle-rattle-

I lifted the shutter at Heo Yoon’s signal.

“Phew… Now shine some light.”

“…”

“Dabin?”

I couldn’t say anything.

I had already seen what was in the dark, dry air of the narrow room with the smell of iron.

Like a flag hanging from a high tree branch. A rope hanging from the ceiling swings.

Whatever is hanging from the rope appears in the sunlight, then disappears back into the shadows behind a drawer.

“There, there.”

“What is it?”

“It’s there.”

I pointed toward the drawer, trying to hold back the nausea rising in my throat.

A drawer that once stored hardware.

The empty drawer was large enough to reach the ceiling, which seemed over 3 meters high.

“What’s there? It’s too dark to see clearly.”

The clouds clear and sunlight streams in.

I could hear Heo Yoon gasp beside me.

Between the dusty old shelves.

Under a rope firmly secured with heavy tool boxes, someone was hanging by their neck.

“Are they already dead?”

“…Yes. It seems so.”

Clang!

As if by agreement, we closed the shutter behind us.

Before others could see, we had things to examine.

I took out my phone and shined the light.

A man hanging from the shelf.

On the gray wall cast by his shadow, letters were written in red spray paint.

[There is no hope]

Large, clearly defined letters.

They’re so neat they look like they were printed rather than handwritten.

“That’s strange. The letters look machine-printed, and above all, it gives me a really bad feeling…”

“They wrote it with this.”

I pointed to the floor.

On the floor were piles of red t-shirts. No, white t-shirts.

An empty red spray can was rolling on top of them.

When I picked up one of the t-shirts and unfolded it, a hole appeared.

“They made holes in white t-shirts in the shape of letters, placed them against the wall, and sprayed red paint over them.”

“And tied one of them to the tree?”

“Yes.”

The so-called masking technique.

It’s actually used in precise painting work.

“So they wrote the letters first, climbed up to tie one of the t-shirts to the tree, then returned to the hardware store and took their own life. That’s what happened.”

Heo Yoon taps the shelf with her fingertips as she pieces together the situation.

“Could this be related? You know what you mentioned before. That someone cut out this space-time with some purpose.”

“There’s no evidence. It’s just my intuition this time.”

“…”

“I feel the same way.”

Heo Yoon lowers her voice.

“Now let’s check that. The corpse, that person.”

Though she appears calm, Heo Yoon is clearly very shaken.

She’s maintaining her tone of voice somehow, but she’s stuttering badly, which is unlike her.

“Yes.”

I turned the phone light from the wall toward the hanging man.

“He’s, he’s dead, right?”

“Yes.”

Slowly.

I shine the light from the feet upward.

Until the outline of the face appears.

Finally, when the face is fully revealed,

Heo Yoon let out a sharp scream.

“Unni?!”

“Huh, huh. Huh…”

Fortunately, there were no passersby on the street, so no one came in.

The problem is Heo Yoon’s condition.

The moment she saw the face, she immediately fell into panic.

“Are you okay? What’s wrong all of a sudden?”

“I know him. I know him, but why is he here? Why is he here?”

“You know him?”

Heo Yoon nods roughly.

Her hair flies wildly back and forth.

“Why is he here? How!”

Someone I don’t know but Heo Yoon does.

Unless Heo Yoon tells me directly, I can’t even guess who it is.

I calmly grabbed Heo Yoon and looked into her eyes.

“Tell me who it is. Is it someone you knew from the apartment?”

“…”

Heo Yoon wiped away her flowing tears and revealed what she knew.

“It’s Teacher Chen.”

“The man who saved me in the apartment. Long ago.”

“We were living together, and then one day he disappeared. Before that, he had said something. When people disappear in the apartment, they often go missing during exploration, but that wasn’t the case. He probably pressed the elevator button himself and went to another floor.”

Heo Yoon speaks intermittently, forcibly swallowing her sobs.

I needed to calm her down while organizing the information in my head.

1. The man hanging here now is someone named Chen.

2. Chen was someone Heo Yoon knew before, one of the survivors who had been surviving together in the apartment.

3. Chen boarded the elevator himself, leaving Heo Yoon, and disappeared.

“So the ‘other floor’ he arrived at could have been right here.”

“I’m not sure about that. It was too long ago. He could have been wandering around.”

Heo Yoon’s shoulders shake as she inhales with a hiccup.

Then she continues to mutter as if something is bothering her.

“But why here?”

“What do you mean?”

“Why? He said he lived in Hong Kong, not here. Why did my hometown appear? Why?”

Heo Yoon’s words sound as if this Chen person could determine the location.

“Unni. You need to calm down. Explain slowly, from the beginning.”

“Sniff. Okay. I know.”

I waited a moment for Heo Yoon to regain her composure.

“…I’m okay now. Where should I start explaining?”

“From what Chen said right before he left. That seems important.”

Heo Yoon seemed to have something on her mind since earlier.

And that’s because she remembers what this person named Chen left behind.

First, I need to know what kind of person Chen was.

Heo Yoon wiped her tears once more and began to speak.

“For days before he left, he kept saying there was a floor that grants wishes, and he was going to find it.”

“A floor that grants wishes? Does such a thing really exist?”

“I’m not sure. It was the first time I’d heard of it too. But he kept saying he was going there.”

“He might have found a floor with similar characteristics. For example, one that changes the scenery to a desired location.”

“I think so too. But why.”

Heo Yoon, unable to contain her emotions, hurls questions at no one in particular.

“Why did he end up like this? Why did he choose where I lived?”

“Why did he leave for some strange place alone?”

“Why does he say there’s no hope? Why!!!”

[There is no hope]

Heo Yoon screams wildly while glaring at the neatly written Korean letters.

He must have been like family to her.

Such a person is hanging by a rope, having taken his own life.

Without leaving any other last words, only the message that there is no hope.

‘There is no hope.’

Did he despair that much about his situation?

He might have taken his own life because he was trapped in the apartment with no way out.

No.

He wouldn’t have left nothing else.

I shook my head firmly.

If he really thought there was no hope, he wouldn’t have gone to the trouble of cutting t-shirts to leave neat letters.

He wouldn’t have climbed all the way up a tree to mark it with a red cloth.

Then what could it be?

Although I didn’t learn much from the conversation with Heo Yoon, I can make some deductions.

First, the appearance of this floor.

The fact that one floor of the apartment was made to look like this was likely according to Chen’s intention.

April 11, 2011, Korea. And specifically just one district.

He cut out that space-time and left it here.

Perhaps he was calculating that Heo Yoon would come here.

The place where Heo Yoon lived. The matching time period is too much to be coincidence.

Then.

Could this Chen person have seen the future?

What was Chen trying to leave behind?

Amidst these cascading questions, the message written on the wall caught my eye again.