Ch.143143 – Gun 3

# Chapter 143 – Gun #3

I closed my eyes and the world turned pitch black.

If my guess was correct, the “Spider Woman” was a being called the Gandara Shaman.

Something between a ghost made from a dead person and a transcendent being close to a god.

It was something that couldn’t be defied, like a law of nature.

Like how water turns to steam at 100 degrees and freezes at 0 degrees.

It followed natural principles, like how putting certain numbers into an equation yields specific results.

I thought that “seeing” her was like invoking the value of “death.”

I remembered Medusa from a comic book I read as a child. The monster Medusa with snakes for hair.

The Gandara Shaman also seemed to be a Japanese yokai originally connected to “snakes,” so the two could be considered similar.

Ring-a-ling, ring-a-ling-a-ling!

Ring-a-ling!

The bell sound rang so loudly it felt like it would tear my ears apart.

I wondered if everyone was following me well.

If we kept going this way, we should reach the “Shop.”

“Everyone! Keep following me! Don’t open your eyes! Hold the hand of the person in front of you!”

I was standing at the very front, leading everyone.

It was only natural since I was the only one who knew the layout of this third floor.

Crack, crackle, snap—

My ears caught sounds like hardened joints being reassembled.

It was a noise that would send chills down anyone’s spine.

Sssssss—

Perhaps due to goosebumps, the cold I felt on my skin seemed to intensify.

Despite wearing layers of clothes, the chill penetrated through, caressing my cheeks from deep within my bones. But as it turned out, that sensation was actually someone’s hand caressing my cheek.

“Open your eyes.”

Someone caressing my cheek spoke to me.

I was so terrified that my legs were trembling, making it difficult to walk properly.

If I didn’t have the “Strong Heart” trait, I might have died right now, vomiting my heart out of my mouth.

“……”

I kept my mouth shut tight, fearing that even responding might be harmful.

From now on, I’m a stone Buddha.

A stone Buddha that can’t see, can’t hear, and can’t speak.

“Kyaaaaaaaaaaaaah!”

Just then, a woman screamed.

It was Yang Juhui’s scream.

What on earth was happening?

Why was Yang Juhui screaming!

Was there some variable I didn’t know about because she had been offered as a “Sacrificial Virgin”?

My mind was filled with thoughts that I should open my eyes and help Yang Juhui.

Helping friends who trusted me and stayed with me until now was a norm more natural to me than saving a baby drowning in a river.

But at this moment, I put the brakes on my actions.

“Kyaaaaaaaaaah!”

That pitiful scream,

That’s not Yang Juhui.

Yang Juhui’s scream doesn’t sound like that.

Her scream isn’t that feminine; rather, it’s more like a duck with its head pressed down.

If I were to describe it in words, it would be like a “quack!” kind of death cry.

Therefore, Yang Juhui’s voice that just came through was false.

It was trying to lure me out with a lie.

I was surprised that I had figured out such a scheme, and at the same time, I felt a sense of injustice that scraped my mood from head to toe.

This injustice was like waiting in line for a long time at a store, only to have sales stop right before my turn.

The kind of injustice that makes you wonder why all the harsh things in the world only happen to you.

“Open your eyes. I won’t eat you.”

The woman now whispered in my ear.

Slither, slither—

The ice-cold hand caressing my cheek was still freezing me.

Feeling extremely wronged, I opened my mouth as if to complain somewhere.

“You won’t eat me?”

“That’s right.”

“Instead, you’re planning to kill me horribly!”

I remembered how Jeongseok had been dismembered like a doll in the hands of a mischievous child.

The Gandara Shaman wasn’t a ghost that ate people; she was a ghost that dismembered and killed.

“Death is merely a state. Do you know ice?”

Ice?

Is the Gandara Shaman asking me if I know what ice is?

“Let’s say water freezes and becomes ice. If that ice melts in hot fire, becomes water again, and then boils into steam that becomes invisible, can we say that existence has disappeared?”

I don’t know. Besides, I heard you’re a Japanese ghost, but you speak Korean really well.

At this rate, you seem to speak better than I do.

“The death of living beings is the same. It’s just a change in form; existence doesn’t disappear. This world is such a place. A cave of eternal recurrence where beginning and end interlock—”

Grasp—

The hand that had been stroking my cheek now strangled my neck.

My breath was choked off.

I also felt my body floating up into the air.

Why!

I had my eyes closed, so why me?

Perhaps engaging in conversation was a foolish action after all.

“I’m just returning you all to a purer form. Shed your shadow. Escape the cave and behold the radiance. The rotting flesh is nothing but a chain binding the prisoner’s ankle—”

“Guk! Guguk!”

“Ha Yeongwon!”

Just then, I heard someone calling my name.

It was Yang Juhui.

At the same time, the strength in the hand choking my neck loosened—slurp.

“You, you saw me.”

From what the shaman said, it seemed Yang Juhui had opened her eyes.

To save me?

I couldn’t think of any other reason. The cold that had dominated my body, freezing my fingers, seemed to melt away at Yang Juhui’s fiery courage.

What would happen now?

It seemed unlikely that we would make it to the shop without incident.

Ring-a-ling, ring-a-ling-a-ling!

The annoying bell sound was still ringing, and I still couldn’t open my eyes.

A suffocating situation.

Yang Juhui spoke.

“I’ve undergone the ritual! You can’t harm me!”

“Is that so? You’re that woman’s bloodline. If you thought that meager spell would protect you, you’re greatly mistaken. Come here. I’ll pluck out your eyes and lick them like candy.”

Grasp!

Guk, guguk—

I heard Yang Juhui’s sounds of pain.

She was clearly being strangled by the eight hands of the Gandara Shaman.

At this point, I had to take action.

“Yang Juhui!”

Pat—

I opened my eyes that had been closed.

Then I heard a sound from behind me.

“What?”

…What?

This was different from the response I expected.

There was something too calm about Yang Juhui’s voice.

Despite the situation, compared to the scream I had expected, it was almost like a coquettish whine.

When I turned my head, I saw Yang Juhui, Teacher Hong Miri, and Yu Dahui with their eyes closed.

They had their eyes closed and were still holding each other’s hands, following me.

“……”

What’s going on here—

Before I could even think about it, my owl-like eyes, bright in the darkness, spotted a woman with long hair in the dark.

Her face hardly seemed human, with excessively wide whites of the eyes and pupils as small as millet. Why such a face?

Perhaps she had undergone convergent evolution to burst the hearts of those who saw her with fear.

“Guguguguguguk—”

Riiiiiiip—

The woman’s mouth widened as if to swallow my head whole.

And then, with an incomprehensibly loud scream, she began approaching me with her eight arms, making me want to collapse on the spot.

“Ah shit! I’m caught! I’m totally caught!”

What parts of this were my hallucination?

Suddenly, I recalled something about strange gas on this third floor that messes with people’s minds and even makes them lose their memories.

I might have been affected by something like that.

“Everyone! I’m going to run! I need to run!”

“You idiot! Damn it! Ha Yeongwon, you stupid bastard!”

Yang Juhui cursed harshly.

After opening her eyes, she pulled out a box cutter from her hand.

Slide—

That’s “Yeongwon’s Box Cutter.”

How many lives had we owed to that thing until now?

But against a being like the Gandara Shaman, that box cutter seemed as precarious as a toothpick pointed at a tank. Of course, Yang Juhui seemed not to care about such things as she raised her hand high.

And then she brought it down hard toward the spider woman lunging at me.

Stab!

The blade touched the spider woman’s shoulder.

“Aaaaaaagh!”

The Gandara spider woman let out a scream so loud it made all of us collapse, then backed away and disappeared with a swish-swish-swish.

Only one of the Gandara Shaman’s arms remained, fallen on the spot.

It was an arm with a flower tattoo on the back of the hand.

“Hey! Are you okay?”

Yang Juhui checked my complexion.

I nodded.

“The box cutter works!”

Ring-a-ling, ring-a-ling-a-ling!

Nevertheless, the bell was still ringing.

I shouted to everyone.

“Let’s just open our eyes and run!”

I just ran with all my might.

Toward the shop.

# # #

As time passes after waking from a dream, those memories tend to evaporate and disappear.

That’s how it was for Kang Bada with the past times.

Wandering around the dark school’s hidden world. Memories of laughing and crying with everyone. Things like the first smell of shampoo or the hot cicada sounds of summer vacation gradually evaporated.

For the man in his mid-thirties, even the time when he was a high school student felt like a dream.

He felt as if he had dropped straight into adulthood from the moment he was born.

So he began a journey to trace his memories.

If he repeated the path he had taken from the beginning, he might see something he had missed.

And so, the place he arrived at was a hospital.

An obstetrics clinic that wouldn’t be strange if it had closed down long ago.

Late dawn.

Kang Bada entered the building as old as the old school building and went into a room marked “Director’s Office.”

Inside sat a woman wearing glasses.

She was the director of this hospital.

“It’s been a while. You remember me, right?”

“How could I forget? After causing so much trouble. Because of you all, our hospital doesn’t do good business. The sound of babies crying… it never leaves my ears. Thanks to that, I quit my job.”

Kim San, the director of Kim San Obstetrics Clinic, looked at Kang Bada with resentful eyes.

The sound of babies crying, which had started coming to her a few days ago, was gnawing at the mind of the woman in her fifties. Kang Bada decided to ask her only about the main point.

“Would there be medical records from 17 years ago?”

“For which woman? The moment when a male high school student who didn’t even have money to pay the doctor brought a woman, begging to save her? Why are you asking about that after 17 years?”

Kang Bada recalled a long-forgotten memory.

Memories he had forgotten due to the toxic gas on the third floor.

“My wife… died shortly after giving birth to our daughter. She hanged herself. I didn’t want to accept it. That she left me behind… meant that there wasn’t enough love…”

The man had been running away.

From the past.

He didn’t have the courage to face the reason why the woman had left him behind.

The hospital director spoke to Kang Bada.

“Just get to the point.”

“I still can’t believe she killed herself. I had decided to look for other methods. Chaeyeon had agreed to join me.”

Kang Bada was paying the price for things he had forgotten.

What is a corridor?

What happened on the fourth floor where Ha Chaeyeon had arrived?

The wish she had made to Yeongwon’s clock was—

Slide—

The director handed an envelope to Kang Bada.

“This is a letter Ms. Yu Inna left for you. It took 17 years because you came so late. I hope you find the answer you’re looking for.”

Rustle—

Kang Bada opened the letter.

Inside were just two lines of text and a square ticket.

“Happy birthday, Bada”

“Let’s go together with Dahui later”

It was a zoo ticket.

Yu Inna liked animals.

And what this indicated was clear.

“…She wanted to live.”

A person resolved to commit suicide doesn’t buy tickets for the future.

This meant only one thing.

His lover, Yu Inna, had never thought of suicide.

Homicide.

A death disguised as suicide.

Kang Bada felt like he knew who the culprit was.