CH 118

“I asked Goyeon to bring one other person,” Seohang said.

The stylist that Goyeon brought was assigned the room where she would ultimately meet her fate at the hands of Hawoo. Woorim added that if the guests didn’t do anything, nothing would have happened. We would have all spent the week quietly and carefully on the top floor.

He then said, “Haeseo, the bottle of sleeping pills we found in the kitchen was empty.”

“What?” I stared dumbstruck, at which he grinned and kissed my cheek.

“There was nothing in it, to begin with. It was an empty bottle that I planted. Nobody here ever ate a sleeping pill. But everyone fell silent when you said that. That was when the lies started. And after the corpses were found, everyone wanted to escape this place as soon as possible.”

The seed of doubt.

After that, the threatening possibility that this mansion could be a location for snuff films made the cast concerned that they might die if they didn’t follow their orders. They were all anxious.

The most anxious of them all was Seogeung Ahn. Someone had died due to the order he followed. The filming crew, who helped him carry out the order, also died. Afterward, he learned that Hawoo killed the stylist. What did Seogeung think as Hawoo ran away, saying that he didn’t know that would happen?

He figured that more people other than him received “orders.” He grew certain that the orders were devices to kill someone, just like he and Hawoo had done. Seogeung was more desperate than any other to get out of this mansion.

The reason he had no restraints in trying to stab Raehee’s neck was that he thought that she also received an order to kill someone. He was worried that he could be the next to die if she followed her order before he knew it.

“You get it, right? I didn’t kill anyone,” he smirked and looked at me. “You? I didn’t have anything to ask you to do. Didn’t you come here to murder Hyehyun?”

I took a sharp breath. I realized why he was telling me all of this.

Starting with Goyeon’s death, the people in the mansion started to shake with fear. Murder was out of the ordinary. Stuck here with a dead body, people would desperately pray to return to life as normal. Only I was different.

Because I came here to kill.

“Honestly, I thought you would kill Hyehyun and that would start affecting the people. I expected the chaos to rise from that point, but I didn’t think Goyeon would die first.”

I shuddered. Even if Goyeon didn’t die, murder would have taken place eventually.

By my hands.

“…Why did you do all that?” I looked at him, who wouldn’t let me go. His obsession was exhausting. Seohang’s eyes met with mine, and they grew round. I saw his eyes filled with delight, reminding me of Woorim, who I killed. I didn’t kill Hyehyun and Woorim to see those eyes again. Something inside me crumbled down. “I understand why you keep hanging around me, but other people have nothing to do with it. Why did you prepare all of this so meticulously…?!”

“Don’t you remember?” Seohang cut me off in the middle. He then looked away slightly and mumbled, “The memory of the body is quite the fearsome force. You still don’t remember?”

“What are you talking about?”

His cryptic words didn’t end there. “Deciding to act nice didn’t erase the painful past.”

I didn’t understand his intention of saying something so unfitting to the situation, but the meaning of the words itself wasn’t hard. Plus, I had said that to him once before. I said it to the one in front of me when he was still Woorim.

“…He said he decided to be friendlier to me. But that couldn’t make me like someone I disliked. Deciding to act nice now didn’t erase my painful past. Being nice to me couldn’t compensate me for his past actions.” I chose my words carefully upon learning that Woorim was “him.” He knew a lot about me, so it was easy to strike a conversation, but I was worried that his train of thought may flow in the wrong direction after listening to me. That conversation was one of those careful exchanges.

“What about it?” I quickly asked back, getting a bad premonition.

Seohang grinned broadly and hugged me tightly. “I was hoping you would remember on your own, if possible.”

“Remember what?”

“Are you rejecting me because I killed your mom and your grandmother? Because you loved them, but I ruined their lives after I appeared? But Haeseo, you can’t hate me for those reasons.”

‘Why did he jump to that topic suddenly?’ I thought, but I was rendered speechless by what he said next.

“Those people weren’t yours. You have nothing to call your own.”

“…I have nothing?”

Seohang was still smiling tenderly. “Why else would I have brought you here? Do you not remember anything? I even tried to recreate the situation as closely as possible. If you keep acting like that, my efforts to cause these events will lose meaning.”

I had no idea what he was going on about. But starting in the middle of his speech, my heart started to pound against my chest. I couldn’t describe it as merely a bad premonition. It felt bizarre. I was wearing Seohang’s outer shirt, so I wasn’t all that cold, yet I kept getting goosebumps all over my body.