Ch.162162 – The Eternal Wager

# 162 – Yeongwon’s Bet

“Ugh, my head hurts.”

Yang Juhui regained consciousness.

She even retched, apparently in pain from the headache that came after having her body stolen by the demon.

I was the same.

Though I had only surrendered my body to the demon for a brief moment, my head ached as if someone had scraped my brain with a pitchfork.

I wondered how Jeong Sojin was doing.

“Let me out of here. Or all of you can just leave through that door.”

Jeong Sojin sat on the operating table, swinging her legs back and forth.

Her eyes, visible through her glasses, were bright red.

The current Jeong Sojin wasn’t human.

She was something wearing human skin.

“Weren’t you going to exorcise me? Why don’t you try something?”

Jeong Sojin smiled with her eyes.

I turned my attention away from that sinister voice and looked at Jeongseok, Kwon Sua, and Yang Juhui.

Despite all the complications, everyone seemed to be safe.

We had escaped from the cramped operating table.

If we wanted to, we could leave through the operating room’s exit door.

“Let’s quickly get out through that door!”

The cowardly Kwon Sua made a tempting suggestion.

Jeongseok, who was almost as timid as Kwon Sua, nodded in agreement.

“I learned a lot of information from that demon. Next time we come back, we can definitely subdue it. Why don’t we retreat for now and come back later?”

It was a good idea.

But it was also just wishful thinking.

There was no guarantee that when we came back, we could trap this demon in such a confined circle again. Perhaps we had just caught a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

At least, that’s what I thought.

“Time doesn’t actually flow in this place.”

I have a status window.

And through the trait of the “Clock,” I could earn points at regular intervals.

However, I had never gained points in this Nightmare Corridor because the corridor itself was a place unrelated to the flow of time.

If we wanted to, we could sit here indefinitely.

“I’m going to wait until the demon gives up on life. It can’t get out from in there. It might look fine now, but eventually it will shudder at that fact.”

My strategy was simple.

Like how it wasn’t the wind but the scorching sun that made the traveler take off his coat, I planned to invest a massive amount of time to make the demon give up, rather than trying to persuade it.

Soon, Jeong Sojin opened her mouth wide and laughed.

“You’ll wait for me to give up without even knowing how much time it will take? Do you know who I am?”

“You’re trapped. I know well because I was trapped in that circle earlier. It’s a cramped place. If you have any sanity, you’ll soon reach your limit.”

I sat down in front of the circle.

Jeongseok, Kwon Sua, and Yang Juhui seemed to understand my intention and sat in a circle around it.

“What if this circle gets erased by your mistake? I’ll get out and chew off all your heads.”

Jeong Sojin asked with narrowed eyes.

Jeongseok quickly responded.

“This circle was drawn with this marker, and it won’t be erased until it’s removed with this marker’s eraser.”

That’s right.

That’s the kind of item it was.

Anyway, the important thing was that we might need an enormous amount of time from now on.

I decided to let everyone know in advance.

“If it gets too hard, you can escape through that door. We still haven’t found the second floor talisman, so two people should be able to escape from the corridor with the second floor talisman and the one attached to the third floor entrance.”

Two people absolutely had to escape.

That way they could devise a strategy based on what happened today.

Preferably, Jeongseok should be one of them.

“I’m bored. Shall we play word chain? Let’s ban one-syllable words.”

# # #

“Back Alley Nymph City.”

“Sua, there’s no such word.”

“There is! It’s a novel title!”

I don’t know how long we’d been playing word chain.

We had cycled through all the words we knew and even started making up non-existent ones.

This place was where time didn’t flow, but according to my internal clock, we had been playing word chain for about two hours.

Word chain for two hours.

It was truly a boring time.

“Why don’t you just give up now?”

Jeong Sojin, sitting on the operating table, chuckled.

She seemed quite eager to make us give up.

What would happen if we gave up now and left Jeong Sojin behind?

Would the demon be trapped forever on that operating table?

That might be the case, but it might not.

If we all left this place, the demon might use some method to escape from that circle.

In fact, it wanted us to leave this operating room.

It clearly planned to do “something” after getting us out.

If that was the case, we absolutely couldn’t leave.

Staying put was the answer.

“Sua, sing for us. Idol Kwon Sua. Wooo—”

“How about we take turns singing?”

Good idea.

With so much time on our hands, we were doing all sorts of things.

It would be nice if we had an English vocabulary book.

So we could study a bit.

“Doesn’t it feel like two days have passed?”

Yang Juhui lay down and yawned.

She seemed to think we had spent about two days in this operating room.

But unfortunately, we had only passed about 10 hours.

A dark place.

Being isolated from the outside world, it was natural that the flow of time felt strange.

I glanced at Jeong Sojin, who was lying on the operating table.

Was she sleeping?

Oh. We made eye contact.

Seems like she wasn’t sleeping.

“Has it been three days?”

Yang Juhui got into position and started doing squats.

She must have been bored of just sitting still.

Unfortunately, Yang Juhui’s sense of time was wrong.

We had only passed about 24 hours.

24 hours guarding an operating table with a trapped demon.

At first it was terrifying, but as we gradually became desensitized, now we were just filled with immense boredom.

And when boredom persists, people’s thinking can become strange.

“Tell us an interesting story.”

The once-fearful Kwon Sua was now addressing Jeong Sojin in the circle.

She was so bored that she wanted stimulation, even if it meant talking to a demon.

“……”

Jeong Sojin kept her mouth shut.

Kwon Sua continued to pester her.

“I said tell us an interesting story!”

Had Kwon Sua’s mental state reached its limit?

It couldn’t be helped.

“Jeongseok. Leave with Sua. I’ll give you the camera, get the talisman and escape.”

I handed the camera to Jeongseok.

Jeongseok, who had been reciting pi, brightened up.

“Will you be okay?”

“I think I’ll be fine since I’ll be with Juhui.”

It would be more boring than when all four of us were here, but I didn’t know what might happen if I kept friends who were pushed to their limits. They might fall for the demon’s temptations.

So I planned to send Kwon Sua and Jeongseok, who seemed to have reached their limits first, through the exit door.

“Juhui, how about you?”

“I’m still okay.”

Like a rocket separating and dropping its propulsion system into the sea, I was planning to use my friends as propulsion for enduring time.

Nevertheless, I had to be prepared to eventually be alone in this place.

No.

To be precise, it would be Jeong Sojin, the demon inside her, and me.

Just the three of us would remain.

“I’ll definitely escape.”

Jeongseok waved his hand with the camera and disappeared through the exit.

With two people gone, the atmosphere in this hellish operating room changed strangely.

Soon, Jeong Sojin, who had been silent for a long time, asked:

“Do you want to know my name that badly?”

“Are you going to tell me?”

We had barely passed 24 hours, and the demon was giving up?

I felt a slight hope, but the demon laughed maliciously.

“Ha Yeongwon. You’re staying for this girl’s sake, right? You must have realized that if you leave through that door, this girl will become mine forever.”

No, I didn’t know that.

If we all left through the exit door, would Jeong Sojin never be able to escape from the demon’s grasp?

Is there a case where one can’t escape from the Nightmare Corridor?

Neither death nor escape, but remaining.

It hadn’t happened before, but I couldn’t say it was impossible.

That was another reason not to leave this operating room.

“Is this girl worth enduring infinite time sitting in place?”

Ah—

Jeong Sojin opened her mouth.

She stuck out her tongue, which was longer than I expected.

“Is this deceitful girl your Mary Magdalene? Do you think she’ll become a repentant prostitute? How pathetic.”

“……”

“After spending an immense amount of time in this place, you won’t be the same person you are now. Eternity is not something humans can endure. Even if you achieve what you want, it’s the same as dying.”

“It’s only been 24 hours, and suddenly you’re talking a lot. Are you afraid I might really stay here forever?”

Jeong Sojin glared at me fiercely through her glasses.

Being glared at by a demon.

That felt like an enjoyable experience in its own way.

Even I thought my courage was remarkable right now.

Perhaps my ability to feel “fear” was already wearing away.

As the demon said, if I spent a long time in this place, the me from yesterday evening and the me from tomorrow morning would be different people.

But there was something the demon possessing Jeong Sojin was overlooking.

“This place is a dream. When I wake up, all these memories will become blurry anyway. That means I won’t change. People can change easily, but they can also remain unchanged no matter what happens.”

“Let’s say that’s true. Let’s say you heard my name. Your friends Jeongseok and Kwon Sua have probably already taken the remaining talismans and escaped, so how will you get out of this corridor? If you die, you’ll forget my name too.”

“I can buy talismans from the shop.”

“The shop?”

Jeong Sojin made a growling sound like an enraged beast.

She seemed to sense that my determination was unusual.

Having sat on that cramped operating table for 24 hours, she must have been incredibly bored, though she didn’t show it.

Yang Juhui, who had been dozing off, shuddered.

“Has it been a week now?”

Yang Juhui’s mental strength also seemed to be at its limit.

I wondered how long I could hold out.

As I was thinking this, Jeong Sojin spoke:

“Fine. I lost today. It’s troublesome for you to keep sitting here. I want you to go around and disrupt the world.”

“You lost?”

“I’ll tell you my name. But in exchange, I’m leaving this circle, just so you know.”

BOOM!

There was a sound like lightning striking, and the operating room caught fire.

Saying she would tell her name while setting the operating room on fire.

She was a bad one.

Thud—

At that moment, Jeong Sojin’s body, sitting on the operating table, wobbled and collapsed.

She fell outside the circle, and Jeong Sojin quickly regained consciousness.

“Oh, my body is back to normal.”

It seemed the demon had really given up Jeong Sojin’s body and fled.

Was it still in this operating room?

Whoosh, crackle, roar!

“Ugh, hot.”

The burning operating room was too hot.

We needed to get out of this place quickly.

But there was a problem besides the demon.

Only two people could leave through the operating room door.

There were three of us.

One person had to stay in this burning operating room.

In this case, there was only one solution.

“Juhui, you take the class president and go.”

“What? You’re going to stay here?”

“There’s a chance that Jeongseok and Sua haven’t escaped yet, or they were caught by ghosts before escaping, so there might be talismans left. You can get a talisman without anyone’s help.”

Only two people could leave this place.

But I could escape this operating room regardless of the rules of the operating room door through a “talisman” that I could draw from my status window.

Crash! Roar!

The operating room was burning fiercely.

As many things were being consumed by the flames, Jeong Sojin spoke:

“Yeongwon! I saw letters in the flames!”

Jeong Sojin shouted to me.

It was the demon’s name.