Chapter 2: Clean ■■

My entire field of vision was tinged red.

It wasn’t because of the blood.

Nor because I had gone blind.

It was as if red lamps had been switched on throughout the house, like the ones that illuminate the display windows of a butcher shop.

The interior, which only moments ago had been completely dark while we searched for a way out, was now illuminated by intensely scarlet candles.

In addition, the white sheets that had covered all the furniture in the living room where we had been sitting and talking had disappeared.

It no longer looked like the same place I knew.

“Damn it… Am I dreaming?”

It was a perfectly reasonable question.

But the enormous pool of blood in front of the entrance was still there.

And so were the cleaning supplies with the Daeseong Cleaning logo clearly stamped on them.

“Haa…”

I took a deep breath and, with all my strength, slapped myself across the face.

Slap!

Sparks burst before my eyes.

“Boss! Why did you suddenly…?”

“I needed to clear my head.”

My cheek began to swell almost immediately and hurt like hell.

But my mind, which until then had been completely dazed, became clear again.

I had no idea what kind of macabre ghost game all of this was.

But the first priority was getting out alive.

My assistant, the youngest employee of Daeseong Cleaning and perhaps the only survivor besides me, Myeong Haebin, pointed to the other side of the pool of blood.

“I guess we can’t leave through that door, right?”

The front door through which the monster had entered remained wide open.

As if it were telling me I could leave whenever I wanted.

“Who knows.”

I took the pen from the pocket of my vest and threw it outside.

The pen traced a parabola through the air.

But the moment it crossed the threshold of the front door.

It disappeared without a trace.

Exactly like the veteran had a moment ago.

“Looks like we can’t get out.”

There was no route that would simply let us escape from that house.

In that case.

I had no choice but to trust the instructions from the application that had already saved me once.

[Completion Condition: Clean ■■.]

It didn’t say escape.

Nor eliminate.

It said clean.

And, judging by the conditions written below, ■■ was the monster trapped inside this house.

If that application really was trying to help me survive.

For ■■ to return, the altar must always be kept clean.

Maybe cleaning that altar was the only way to get out of here.

“We need to find the altar.”

“An altar? What are you talking about…? What is it supposed to look like?”

“I don’t know.”

The house had changed completely.

Wooden walls.

Antique solid-wood furniture.

Even the table was covered with a lace tablecloth.

It looked like an old-fashioned home.

At the same time, aside from the red color of the candles scattered everywhere, the rest still looked like a completely normal house.

Who would imagine there was an altar in a place like this?

If it weren’t for the application, the thought would never have occurred to me.

“Let’s look for it. There were three rooms on the ground floor, right?”

“Yes. Two guest rooms and a storage room. I think the study and the master bedroom were upstairs.”

Should we check the ground floor first before the monster appeared?

But.

“If there really is an altar, I doubt it would be in a guest room. What do you think about checking the second floor first?”

I was thinking exactly the same thing.

This was reality.

Not a video game where you could just click everywhere until you found a clue through sheer probability.

If that was the case.

The place most likely to contain an altar was.

“Let’s go to the study first.”

“Yes, boss. But you said there was still one person alive with that monster. What about him…?”

The hand I was using to sling the bag of cleaning tools over my shoulder froze.

She was probably referring to the employee who had run toward the back door first.

I looked back and forth between the dark hallway where the utility room was and the stairs beside me.

Then I squeezed my eyes shut.

“Let’s find a way to escape first…”

I hadn’t even finished the sentence when something familiar fell into my hands.

The handle of a mop.

“Yes! That comes first.”

Myeong Haebin started climbing the stairs even before I did.

But.

For an instant, I saw her expression.

She was smiling.

Was I imagining things?

No.

Haebin would also want to survive above all else.

That was only logical.

Come on.

Stop imagining things.

I shook my head hard to push those thoughts away and followed her up the old staircase.

“Wow, this looks like a set straight out of a movie.”

The study was just as old-fashioned as the ground floor.

The wooden bookshelves were perfectly lined with hardcover books.

There was an enormous desk and a comfortable armchair.

It looked like the set of a Western movie.

“Even if there were one or two books for summoning monsters mixed in with all these, I probably wouldn’t even notice.”

The titles engraved on the spines gleamed in gold and silver lettering.

Under normal circumstances, I never would have touched any of them.

At most, I would have dusted them.

But.

Would there really be an altar here?

Maybe it wasn’t something as large and majestic as I was imagining.

Bzzz.

The application updated again.

Any human who wishes to consult the books in the study must show respect.

What a pointless concern.

I hadn’t come here to read books.

I had come to find an altar.

“Haebin, just in case, don’t touch any of the books.”

“Understood! But this drawer is locked.”

While searching the enormous desk, Myeong Haebin raised her hand like a student eager to answer in class.

“The drawer?”

“Yes. You never know, right? Maybe there’s a note that says something like, pull the third book to open the secret passage leading to the altar.”

She had clearly watched too many movies.

But what she was saying wasn’t that far-fetched either, so Myeong Haebin approached the desk, huffing from the effort.

“That’s strange. It doesn’t have a lock.”

“Let me see. Move aside.”

One of the wooden drawers, its grain completely exposed, was slightly open.

Apparently, Haebin had already tried to force it open.

But no matter how hard she pulled, it only rattled.

It wouldn’t open.

It doesn’t seem to be locked. Rather, something is blocking it from the inside.

I turned on my phone’s flashlight.

Along the drawer’s side rail, there was a large amount of a black, mud-like substance stuck to it.

No wonder it wouldn’t open.

Though calling it mud was generous.

It looked more like tar.

Or a huge piece of hardened chewing gum.

“I think we’ll have to remove this before we can open it.”

“No wonder it wouldn’t move. How did you notice?”

“If it were locked, the latch wouldn’t be broken.”

Nothing breaks for no reason.

If you clean it, repair it, and put it back in proper condition, it works again.

Let’s see.

I took a dry cloth out of the cleaning bag and wrapped it around my hand before touching the mass.

I scraped at it with my fingertips.

It was hard and sticky.

It wasn’t going to come off like this.

“Come on, that’s not going to work.”

“We won’t know until we try. What if it opens?”

Haebin tapped her foot against the floor, clearly nervous.

But I couldn’t simply ignore what was right in front of me.

I sprayed liquid detergent onto the cloth, covered the black mass, and held out my other hand.

“Pass me the scraper.”

“The plastic one or the metal one?”

“The metal one. The sharpest one.”

Although she looked at me as if I were crazy, Haebin placed the scraper in my hand.

I pressed the thin but sturdy blade almost completely flat against the rail to separate the stuck-on substance.

Then, from outside the room, came the sound of wood creaking and breaking.

Craaack!

Crash!

It sounded like the monster had finally gotten out of that room.

“I-I’ll go close the door…”

Instead of looking toward Haebin, who ran to the door in a panic, I focused on what I was doing.

It’s nothing more than half-hardened gum.

I’m just cleaning.

Don’t get nervous, Kim Hanmu.

I removed the cloth and slid the scraper blade beneath the foul-smelling mass.

Part of the substance, now softer, gave way beneath the blade, creating a small gap.

It had worked.

Thunk!

Drag…

Thunk!

The heavy footsteps capable of giving me post-traumatic stress began slowly climbing the stairs from the ground floor.

Anyway.

There was nowhere to hide in this house.

We were little more than trapped rats.

I firmly gripped the loosened chunk and carefully pulled so it wouldn’t break.

Riiip!

With a long, sticky sound, the entire mass lodged inside the rail came out at once.

“Boss, hurry…!”

Just as Haebin, unable to bear it any longer, shouted desperately

The drawer finally moved.

Clack.

“It opened…!”

But at that moment.

A heartrending scream echoed from outside.

“H-Help me!! Please!! Is anyone there?!”

The door to the room next door began shaking violently.

Then came the sound of running footsteps.

So the third person I hadn’t even bothered to look for.

Was still alive.

And, to make matters worse, there was no note inside the drawer.

Only a book bound in black leather.

《Record of the Prayers of Pure Greed》

I only recognized one of the Chinese characters.

The one that meant “to covet.”

Beneath the title were embossed Korean letters.

《Prayer Book for Him》

Prayers?

Wasn’t that exactly what the second rule was about?

“What do we do? Should we open the door for him?”

“Wait a moment.”

The hand holding the book began to sweat.

This was still a book.

Shouldn’t I treat it with respect?

I didn’t know what kind of respect it expected.

But there was one thing I knew for certain.

If I kept hesitating.

If I was too late.

If, even after clearly hearing his screams, I decided to ignore them.

“Even if I survived, I’d have nightmares for the rest of my life.”

I couldn’t keep pretending nothing was happening.

I opened the book’s cover all the way.

Suddenly.

An enormous mouth burst out from inside it.

It was exactly like the monster’s.

And before I could even throw the book away.

Crunch!

The mouth bit off my left hand.

I had turned the cover disrespectfully, breaking the rule.

“…!!”

All the pain in my body seemed to concentrate in my severed left wrist.

Blood began gushing out as if someone had turned on a faucet.

The pain was so intense that I couldn’t even scream.

“D-Don’t come any closer! Get away!”

Thunk!

Scrape.

The footsteps and screams outside drew closer and closer.

If I didn’t do something.

I would only lose a hand.

But that employee would be devoured headfirst.

I pressed the bleeding stump firmly against my thigh in an attempt to slow the bleeding.

Then, with the only hand I had left, I turned the page.

〈Table of Contents〉

[Lullaby for the Sun That Never Sleeps]

[Feast for the God Built from Bones]

[Oath Offered to the Flowing Blood]

…

I understood instinctively.

There were many prayers.

But only one was the correct one.

That was why it said a prayer dedicated to Him.

There was a clue.

Among all those titles, two had black stains stuck to them.

The same substance I had just removed from the drawer.

But there was no time to analyze them one by one.

“Haebin. Open the door now.”

“What…? Are you seri…? Boss, your hand…!”

“I know. Open the door.”

Haebin’s eyes widened when she saw the blood dripping from my wrist.

But instead of freezing, she threw the door wide open.

“Aaaah!!”

The employee in the hallway had tripped while fleeing and was lying on the floor.

The monster was slowly chewing on one of his mangled shoes.

Apparently, it still hadn’t seriously injured him.

Nor had it started eating him.

Crawling across the floor in tears, he screamed desperately.

“Hanmu! Save me!”

How ridiculous human beings can be.

Right in front of him was someone who had just lost a hand and was covered in blood.

And yet.

The first thing he did was ask to be saved.

In my hands, I held the book open to the table of contents.

Only two possibilities remained.

[Prayer for the Hungry Beast]

[Worship for He Who Has Forgotten Satiety]

Which one was correct?

“…Now there are three.”

A thin hand grabbed the employee’s ankle.

With the innocence of a child, that voice murmured as though the food before it were delicious.

Without even realizing that blood was once again gushing from my wound, I held the book with my mutilated left arm and turned the page with my right hand.

I read aloud the words printed on the yellowed paper.

The prayer titled Worship for He Who Has Forgotten Satiety.

“Thou dost not remember what it means to be sated, and we too embrace hunger as a virtue.”

The mouth that was about to devour the employee’s head stopped dead.

Its smooth, eyeless head slowly began to rise to look at me.

“From a place lower than the earth beneath thy feet, we revere the movement of thy stomach.”

I couldn’t look away.

But my voice, as though an old cassette tape were speaking through my tongue, recited those words without sounding like my own.

“Ugh… Haa…”

“Boss, come over here!”

While the monster and I remained motionless, separated only by that grotesque prayer, Haebin dragged the employee, whose legs were no longer responding, toward her.

But I couldn’t stop the prayer.

“For we know that thy hunger can never be sated…”

The monster stopped directly in front of me.

Saliva slowly dripped from all its mouths.

And yet.

I couldn’t take a single step back.

“Even while thou sleepest, we shall prepare thy table.”

The prayer ended there.

I didn’t know whether I had chosen correctly.

Or whether I had just made a fatal mistake.

The countless jaws scattered across the monster’s body opened and closed several times.

“Did you promise?”

Its hot breath, thick with the smell of blood, struck my face.

Then a long red tongue licked the stump of my wrist.

“That when I wake up, you’ll prepare a new table for me.”

The monster slowly lowered its body.

Then it curled in on itself and closed all its mouths.

As if it had truly fallen asleep.

Its back rose and fell with calm breaths.

Only a moment later did I feel a shiver run up my back from bottom to top.

I had survived.