By Zephyria 
“They’re all paintings related to the Papin sisters.”
“Yeah. And the hallway that appeared small in the painting of the cleaning looked like this hallway we’re walking through.”
“Th-then, this is the actual murder scene….”
The hand holding the notepad trembled slightly. Hadn’t the broadcast introduced it as the Mansion of Tragedy?
Jeil Heon let out a short laugh and patted his head.
“The anomaly is just mimicking it.”
“R-right, of course.”
“Though the original source they’re mimicking likely existed in reality.”
“Aaaah.”
It felt like riding a rollercoaster between terror and relief. Jeil Heon toyed with his lips. Yoo Jiha had vaguely noticed that this was an unconscious habit he had when he wanted to smoke but was holding back because Jiha was beside him.
“According to the staff’s explanation when we entered, they said it was an escape room designed with a motif based on a real-life murder case.”
“Ah! That, that, what was it, Pa, Pa, Ba… Versailles?”
“The Papin sisters.”
About 100 years ago in France, two maid sisters brutally murdered the mother and daughter of the family that employed them, an event that became the motif for various creative works. There was certainly a common thread among the ten paintings.
“The Agent who survived and wrote the Procedure Manual also mentioned that their experience was in an escape room related to a ghost ship drifting at sea.”
“That must be why the Procedure Manual mentioned the ocean.”
“Since this is an Aberrant Realm mimicking an escape room, my guess is that the way to escape will also be like an escape room—solving puzzles.”
“The Procedure Manual only told us to be careful; did the Agent not give any other tips?”
“It was Team Leader Lee Kang-min. I heard that instead of solving puzzles, he saw something like land in the distance, so he jumped into the sea and swam his way out.”
“Aha. So he just… charged right in. Then the puzzle we have to solve in the hallway must be the paintings, right?”
“I suspect the ‘Positioning’ in the True Eye Text means we have to arrange the positions. For now, shall we try lining them up in chronological order according to the flow of the paintings?”
Looking back, Yoo Jiha felt his mind go blank. He had to begin the grueling labor of rearranging the order of these large paintings, walking back and forth along that long hallway. The lingering gazes from the portraits were just a bonus.
“Let’s go….”
Jeil Heon supported the limp Yoo Jiha.
“I’ll do it, so just rest if you’re tired.”
“No…. It’s work…. I have to work…. That’s why I get paid…. Ahaha, how exciting….”
Where did my date go? While swallowing his tears, Yoo Jiha watched as Jeil Heon walked along, nonchalantly stepping on a pale hand that slid out from the carpet to suddenly grab his ankle. If it had been him, he definitely would have screamed and caused a scene.
It seemed that this man couldn’t be frightened by 21st-century—or even 22nd-century—horrors.
Every time a frame was removed from the wall, the figures in the paintings let out terrible screams. They were screams that encouraged the Contamination of the mind. With an expressionless face, Jeil Heon either slammed the frames against the wall or threw them to the floor until the screaming stopped. It was a reminder that he was a truly ruthless person when dealing with anomalies.
Jiha tried to help move the frames, but they were heavier than expected, and his legs began to shake from constantly pacing the long hallway. Instead, Yoo Jiha worked hard at massaging Jeil Heon’s shoulders.
With a feeling as if he had run a marathon, the paintings were finally hung in order. The sequence was complete: sisters abused by their parents were hired by a great mansion, enjoyed a happy working life, then grew resentful of their employers, killed them one by one, and finally burned the mansion down. Yet, the surroundings remained silent.
“Everything else seems right…. Could the order of the murdered family members be wrong?”
In the current order, the couple was killed first, followed by the children in order of age. If they had to arrange them randomly, they might have to redo it up to twenty-four times…. Or was it not chronological order?
He couldn’t walk this hallway any further. Driven by the sole desire to protect his knees, he tried to look for other hints, but Jeil Heon rubbed the back of his neck and sneered.
“You probably wouldn’t have gotten the order right. Only someone with a personality as bad as mine would know the answer.”
Walking forward with steady steps, he took down one frame without hesitation. The painting he chose was the one depicting ‘the gentle-smiling family of the mansion and the maid sisters,’ which had been hung between ‘the maid sisters happily cleaning and cooking in the mansion’ and ‘the master couple raising their voices at the maid sisters.’
He hung that painting last. After the ‘painting of the mansion engulfed in flames.’
Then, the expressions of the gently smiling figures changed. The maid sisters beamed with joy, as if they couldn’t be any happier, while the master family wore grotesque smiles, as if invisible hands were pulling at the corners of their eyes and mouths. As blood flowed from their skin, torn by the intensity of their smiles, passing the frame and running down the wall, a door appeared in the wall with a rumbling sound.
Jeil Heon tapped the wall with his finger.
“Because this is likely the scene the sisters desired. And the burned mansion has been restored.”
“I-I guess so….”
With the certainty that the Papin sister entities must be somewhere in this vast mansion, Yoo Jiha clung even tighter to Jeil Heon’s arm.
The puzzles in the remaining rooms were also related to the mansion’s tragedy. He had to solve puzzles such as completing the master family using dismembered corpses (Aberrations disguised as such), killing the master family (Aberrations disguised as such) in the same manner, finding the actual murder weapon among various weapons (Aberrations disguised as such), or excavating skeletal remains (Aberrations disguised as such) from the ruins of the burnt mansion. By this point, he was on the verge of a puzzle-induced mental breakdown.
Yoo Jiha felt a desperate regret that this shouldn’t have been a two-hour escape room, but a short one-hour one. The only hope was that there was no time limit.
“I’ve never been so glad that Aberrations can’t perfectly mimic humans…. If the corpses had been realistic, really, ugh….”
“Though we did have to keep wondering whose finger the 53rd one belonged to.”
Limping, they passed through the door that had appeared in the card room. Outside the door was the same hallway as when they entered, but there were no paintings, decorations, or carpets. He felt certain that all the puzzles were finished. It was the end of an agonizingly long overtime shift.
A sense of pride filled his chest for escaping an Aberrant Realm that didn’t even have a Procedure Manual. Now he really felt like a proper Management Bureau Agent!
“I’ll open the last door!”
Before Jeil Heon could stop him, Yoo Jiha vigorously opened the door at the end of the hallway. At that moment, an arm reaching out from the darkness pierced through his abdomen.
No, it would have pierced through. If Jeil Heon hadn’t been there.
“…!”
Yoo Jiha looked at the arm that had lunged as if to pierce his stomach, and Jeil Heon’s hand, which held that arm firmly without budging. He hadn’t even realized he was being targeted, but the man behind him had suppressed it with agility.
What would have happened if it weren’t for him? A chill belatedly ran down his spine. His legs, which had instinctively recoiled, gave out and he slumped down. He could only gasp for air, not even noticing Jeil Heon’s cold gaze quickly scanning his entire body for injuries.
Jeil Heon closed his eyes for a moment and then opened them. The pupils, which had slit vertically like a beast’s when the child was in danger and his composure broke, returned to human form.
“…Jiha. Step aside for a moment.”
Only after confirming that the vocal cords could produce sound like a human, even if the tone was murky and sunken, did Jeil Heon drag the Aberration out from the darkness beyond the door.
「Kieaaaah!」
The thing that was dragged out, letting out a repulsive scream, was….
“…Sunbae?”
It had the face of Park Jun-yeol.
The Aberration in the form of Park Jun-yeol writhed, screaming. Its arm tore away from the shoulder as it struggled with grotesque movements, as if all the joints in its body had been haphazardly misaligned. It collapsed back into the darkness, leaving only the arm that Jeil Heon was holding.
With a single blink, the darkness vanished like a lie, and only a wasteland, similar to the scenery seen outside the window, stretched beyond the door.
On the outer wall of the Gothic-style mansion, there was a sign in a cute font with fluorescent stars twinkling. Ulala Escape Room. Well, it was indeed an Aberrant Realm that could make one go ‘Ulala’ with how startling it was. Especially the end.
Even though they were now in a safe zone, his heart wouldn’t calm down. It was because of the Aberration he had witnessed just moments ago.
What was most bizarre was that he couldn’t see the True Eye Text, which should have naturally been readable if it were an Aberration. …Was that really just an ordinary Aberration?