Ch.95Memory Hunter (2)

The elevator kept moving.

Strangely, it just kept going.

The first to act was, of course, Heo Yoon.

“Let’s stop the elevator first. What do you think?”

“Let’s do that.”

“Agreed.”

Heo Yoon sought the other survivors’ consent first.

I nodded silently as well.

“I’ll press floor 11. No objections, right?”

“No.”

“Pressing it now?”

Click.

Heo Yoon pressed the number 11.

This should make the elevator stop moving and change its destination to a relatively normal numbered floor.

It was the so-called elevator hierarchy.

Floors with alphabets couldn’t take precedence over numbered floors.

Clunk. Clunk.

“What’s going on? Did you press it correctly?”

Seok Hyunmin showed signs of confusion.

Choi Serim also asked with an anxious voice.

“Unnie?”

“Wait. I definitely pressed it! Look, the red light is on!”

Heo Yoon moved aside to show the elevator wall.

The button with the number 11 clearly had its border lit up.

“Then why is this happening?”

Yoon Daju’s face turned serious again.

Jung Haewon chimed in from the side.

“Are we trapped in here?”

“We’re not trapped. The doors will open when we reach our original destination.”

Heo Yoon answered calmly, but even she didn’t seem to fully grasp the situation.

“Where is our original destination?”

“Haewon, you pressed it.”

“I pressed the button?”

“What? You didn’t? Was it someone else? Why can’t I remember?”

Everyone’s memories were conflicting. We needed to sort out the facts first.

“Haewon definitely pressed the button.”

“Right?”

“Yes.”

“Then maybe the floor that was pressed earlier had higher priority?”

Choi Serim made her deduction in a quiet voice.

Though we couldn’t know for sure, it was a reasonable guess.

“Numbered floors are supposed to be higher priority than alphabet floors.”

“There could be exceptions.”

Seok Hyunmin was lost in thought while Choi Serim immediately countered.

True to their intellectual nature, their conversation proceeded intermittently, with thinking time between each exchange.

“Is it possible that Haewon only pressed numbers?”

This time Jung Haewon spoke up.

It was his business after all, so he should know best.

“That’s definitely not it. I think I pressed numbers first and then mixed in some alphabets.”

“What? Earlier you said you couldn’t even remember pressing anything!”

Jung Haewon awkwardly scratched the back of his head after Yoon Daju’s sharp remark.

“I remembered as we were talking. I definitely pressed alphabets.”

My memory confirmed this too.

Though all memories were hazy, I could vaguely recall it.

“Or we could all be mistaken.”

“Dabin, what do you mean?”

“Maybe all of us are experiencing a hallucination that we’re trapped in an elevator continuously descending.”

“Huh.”

“Another hallucination?”

Heo Yoon let out a hollow laugh while Seok Hyunmin adjusted his glasses.

“No potatoes appearing, right?”

Daju’s random worry about potatoes was just extra.

The elevator kept moving.

“What if we can’t get out of here?”

“Come on, that can’t happen.”

“It could! You said travel time between floors varies. So maybe some floors… take decades or centuries to reach.”

“The exploration records didn’t mention any floors like that.”

“You know those records aren’t very helpful.”

Everyone fell silent at Jung Haewon’s unpleasant remark.

Normally, Daju would have stepped in to shut him up.

But Yoon Daju was crouched in a corner like a sick puppy.

“Hey, Yoon Daju. Are you sick?”

“Oppa…”

When I approached, Daju weakly lifted her head.

Her blue-tinged lips were trembling.

“What if potatoes appear… or a laboratory… with injection devices… a lab that injects potatoes into your brain?”

“What?”

Daju started rambling nonsense again.

Potatoes. Whether eating people made of potatoes counts as cannibalism. The difference between lab-cloned potatoes, sweet potatoes injected with potato memories, and potatoes dug from fields.

“Daju, there’s no such laboratory.”

“No, there is. It’s so vivid in my mind, it has to exist. What do I do, oppa?”

She clearly wasn’t in good shape.

The elevator kept moving.

No stimuli or changes came from outside.

Gradually, I and everyone else started becoming strange.

It happened so naturally that it felt like we’d always been this way.

“No. No…!”

Heo Yoon leaned against the elevator door, sobbing uncontrollably.

“Hayul, no. Hayul isn’t strange. Mommy’s sorry…”

Heo Yoon was calling out to Seok Hayul with a choked voice.

The child she had with Seok Hyunmin. But it wasn’t a human child, just a terrible demon’s incarnation.

I’m sure those memories were supposed to be erased.

Perhaps traces remained in a corner of her mind.

Everyone was terrified for different reasons.

“Damn it, I didn’t do it. I didn’t steal anything. Really! Why would I leave home!”

“I want to get out of here. Foundation server? Why am I here?”

“I hate potatoes. I’m scared.”

“Hayul! Hayul!”

“Noona… I think something’s wrong with Hayul… but I shouldn’t say that.”

And then, Choi Serim.

Lying like a doll with empty eyes, just shedding tears.

Even when I grabbed and shook the others, they were all lost in their own recollections. No responses came.

They were all ruminating on their own traumas.

I was the only one still sane.

Actually, that wasn’t true either. Tears kept welling up in my eyes. If I let my guard down even slightly, I felt like I’d collapse and sob uncontrollably.

– I’m sorry. After reviewing your manuscript, our editorial team has decided we cannot serialize it on our platform. However, your solid artistic fundamentals and aspects of your scenario were impressive… I look forward to working with you on better opportunities in the future.

– Mom is sitting in the living room.

Dabin. You’ve tried this drawing thing long enough. You know better than anyone that you don’t have talent. Dad has found a job opening at a company through someone he knows, so please…

– You need to wake up and let go of these delusions. I can say this because I’m your friend.

I clearly knew the cause of all this.

Something around here was having a profound effect on the life forms inside the elevator.

But I couldn’t remember anything.

The elevator continued downward.

In the elevator that had become a sea of tears, only I was lost in thought.

“Potatoes… so scary… I hate laboratories too…”

“I’m sorry, Daju.”

I pushed away Daju, who was a mess of tears and snot.

For a moment I felt I was too harsh, but there was no choice in this situation.

Let me organize things again.

Starting with what I clearly remember.

I’m not in my right mind.

The proof is these unpleasant memories that keep surfacing.

Someone is outside the door.

“Electrical inspection!”

I hurriedly moved the boxes. I brought the newly moved belongings and piled them in front of the door.

My arms kept trembling, but I couldn’t stop.

There was an unfamiliar girl in the mirror, and an even more unfamiliar presence lurked outside the door, pounding on it continuously, shouting to open up.

“Open the door. Open it. Open. Open. Open.”

…Only anguish rises to the surface.

Nothing else comes to mind.

While staring blankly into space, my gaze fell on the mirror.

Ah.

I’ve become a woman now.

Does that mean I was originally a man?

Why did this happen?

Just a little more.

I extend the branches of thought.

I don’t remember why I became a woman, but I do remember thinking it was fortunate.

The surroundings are full of dangerous entities. Things that immediately begin to consume your body at the slightest touch.

To counter them, you need anomalous resistance.

Women have stronger resistance than men.

Thanks to becoming a woman, I was among those with very strong resistance.

No.

Saying I had very strong resistance is insufficient.

I could nullify almost everything, couldn’t I?

But I’m not normal now.

That means my anomalous resistance isn’t working properly.

I wiped away my tears with my hand.

Why is that?

A gap has formed somewhere.

If I pry open this gap and look inside, this hazy mystery will be solved.

I’m going to die.

People, live well. Live with the things you’ve achieved by chance, without knowing failure, desperation, or pain.

I crushed the beer can.

Threw it onto the drawing notebook sitting there.

As the beer splattered, I cursed and got up.

My back, each twisted vertebra, screamed in pain.

“Shut up.”

I clear away the fog.

I was trapped in an elevator before.

The door panel fell off, and I escaped through the outside and returned.

Between the elevator and the stairwell.

The long, narrow passage where the lift travels.

It was in that abyss.

Normally, it wouldn’t have targeted me.

But the situation was a bit different.

The seed of fear it planted in me then has now grown into viciously overgrown weeds.

The way to escape this situation is simple.

I need to uproot the fear firmly lodged in my mind, no matter how painful it is.

Boom.

Boom.

The continuously moving elevator. An inertial system.

It is right above this ceiling.

The idea that I had shaken it off was probably an illusion.

I stood up.

I went straight to the door and kicked one side of it violently.

Crash!

It might have worked if I were a man, but with my much smaller body, it was insufficient.

Neither my strength nor the weight I could put behind my foot was enough.

In that case, I have no choice but to do this.

After taking a deep breath.

I backed up several steps. Until my back touched the opposite wall.

Ta-da-dat-

I charged with all my might and rammed my shoulder into the door.

The morbid pleasure of breaking something.

The metal panel crumpling.

Along with the thunderous sound echoing in the narrow, dark space, the cool, dry outside air enveloped me.

Bang.

I fell.

Along with the detached elevator door.

Whoosh-

I hear the sound of water from above that I hadn’t noticed before.

My abyss.

Let’s finish our unfinished conversation now.

***

Heo Yoon opened her eyes.

The damp fatigue of having cried for a long time permeated her body.

She felt dazed for a moment. But soon snapped back to her senses.

“What happened? We were all out of our minds, weren’t we? Hey!”

Heo Yoon’s voice echoed loudly in the already cramped elevator.

She grabbed the first shoulder she saw and asked,

“Ugh…”

Seok Hyunmin, who was beside her, just waved his hand with his eyes tightly shut.

“Is everyone okay? Does anyone know what happened?”

“No idea.”

Surprisingly, it was Yoon Daju who gave a coherent answer.

“The elevator stopped.”

As soon as she heard those words, Heo Yoon shifted her gaze.

One side of the elevator door had fallen off, and Yoon Daju was staring blankly into the abyss below while speaking.

“Unnie.”

Her voice was unlike her usual self.

That alone made Heo Yoon feel uneasy.

Speaking as if in a monologue, in a subdued voice, she said:

“Do you see the water on the floor?”

“Huh? Water?”

Though she hadn’t noticed it until just now, there was a lot of water pooled in the elevator.

It splashed around even with the slightest movement of her feet.

“It must have been pouring from the ceiling.”

“…And we didn’t notice it the whole time.”

“No.”

“Unnie.”

“…Yes?”

“I think there was something down there. Or maybe above. Could be both.”

“What do you mean?”

“I think it twisted our memories, erased them, and made us terrified.”

While Heo Yoon stood there, not knowing what to say, the awakened people gradually gathered behind her.

Seok Hyunmin and Choi Serim, Jung Haewon and the AI too.

But they all remained silent.

Only Yoon Daju continued her monologue.

With her gaze fixed downward.

“But now we’re fine. Do you know what that means?”

“…”

Heo Yoon and the others.

They had already noticed.

“Dabin oppa is gone.”