Courage Test (2)

“W is to go forward. A is left. S is back, and D is to go right. And if you turn the mouse like this, you can change your view as if turning your head.”

The WASD control method was something that anyone who had played computer games would know.
But Yoo Dahee seemed to have no idea about the controls and had to be taught from the beginning one by one.
Of course, it was fortunate for me that I had Jeong Seok as a teacher.

“Now, try moving. If you press the shift button, you’ll run, but be careful because if the stamina gauge drops, you’ll be forced to walk. Also, running makes your footsteps louder. There’s a ‘slipper’ item, so it’s okay for now.”

After roughly explaining the controls, Jeong Seok spoke to Yoo Dahee as if dealing with someone who had removed the training wheels from a bicycle.
Yoo Dahee soon placed her white, slender hands on the keyboard and slowly pressed the buttons.

“It’s interesting. So this is how you move in games.”

“Ghosts roaming the corridors often approach by hearing sounds. It’s best to move quietly. If it seems dangerous, hide in places like these lockers before getting caught.”

“I’ll give it a try!”

And so the game began.

What will happen now?
We all watched Yoo Dahee’s game with interest from a step away.

Maybe Yoo Dahee has tremendous talent and will break through that dark corridor…
That thought was brief.

“Ah… I died.”

She was caught and died very easily.
It was because she wasn’t used to the controls.

“Ah. I died again.”

After that, she kept dying.
Shouldn’t you master the controls first before proceeding with the game?

“You have to move the mouse and keyboard together. Dahee, you stop the keyboard when you move the mouse now. When you control the direction with the keyboard, you’re not moving the mouse.”
“Should I just lower the difficulty for you? Or maybe use cheats or something?”

Jeong Seok and I contemplated and discussed how to make Yoo Dahee enjoy this game better.
Of course, Yang Juhui, who was watching this process, clicked her tongue as if she didn’t like something.

“Hey. Hey. Leave it. What’s with the game? Let’s just eat.”

Before we knew it, it was lunchtime.
We decided to order delivery food through an app.

*Ding dong*

“I think the delivery is here.”

With that feeling, we all ate hamburgers for lunch.
Why does time go by so fast on holidays?
Just sitting together and chatting all day is really fun, I thought, as Yoo Dahee, who was wiping the sauce on her mouth with a tissue, asked.

“By the way.”

There was a certain strength in Yoo Dahee’s voice.
Should I say it grabs people’s attention?

“But why do you play a game with scary ghosts?”

What is the meaning of this question?
Is she asking why we’re playing a game that has similarities to “Nightmare Corridor”?
Or is she just asking why we play scary games because she doesn’t understand?

Jeong Seok said.

“Fear is a fundamental human emotion. The reason for watching horror movies. The reason for playing horror games is that it can be training for emergency situations that can occur in reality. This is research content.”

Is that so?
It was a fact I didn’t know either.
However, Yoo Dahee raised her distinct eyebrows as if she didn’t quite understand.

“If it’s an emergency situation that can happen in reality, does that mean ghosts actually appear? Honestly, I don’t know how being chased by ghosts in a game can be training.”

Is that so?
Jeong Seok added.

“It’s a genre that divides likes and dislikes. Horror genres like horror games actually have a maniacal aspect in some ways. Anyway, if you’re done eating, shall we play the game again? What do you want to do?”

I was the leader of this group.
Jeong Seok asked for my opinion, and I had to think for a moment.
The reason we gathered today was to play and try to clear “Abyss Corridor” completely.
Even though the atmosphere got a bit strange, it would be right to go according to the purpose.

“I’ll play the game myself now.”

I decided to play the game myself.
The progress was fast, and I easily found the exit of stage 1 and moved on to stage 2.

Stage 2 wasn’t just a dark corridor but a place with more ghosts appearing and a more gruesome background.
It was like a hellish place, and it was so dark that even I had a bit of difficulty finding my way.

“Ah, damn. I keep dying.”

As I kept dying, everyone got bored.
Jeong Seok was doing something on his cell phone, and Yang Juhui turned on the TV and was watching a variety show.
The only one watching my game was Yoo Dahee, standing behind me.

“Ah. I got all the keys, so I just need to escape. It’s too dark, I can’t see anything. It would be perfect if a flashlight would appear.”

“Youngwon. I think there will be stairs if you go to the right here. Try going there.”

Some time ago.
Yoo Dahee must have found it boring to just watch, so she started backseat gaming for me.

Someone who can’t even control the direction keys well is backseat gaming.
But just in case, I turned to the right and was surprised to actually see the stairs.

“How did you know?”

“I didn’t know well before. This place resembles somewhere I know. If you go down the stairs, there will probably be an exit door.”

Indeed, when I went down the stairs, there was an exit door, and I succeeded in escaping.
Now it was time to move on to stage “3”, but it returned to the loading screen.
The game had ended.

“Hey. Jeong Seok. Is there no stage 3?”

“Oh. That’s early access.”

“Early what?”

“You can think of it as a system where an unfinished game is sold for money first, and then the remaining parts are completed with the budget acquired that way.”

What a strange system.
The important thing was that the game ended here.

What I found out while playing this game was that Jeong Seok was bad at horror games, Yoo Dahee was a complete novice, and Yang Juhui screamed her head off when seeing the ghosts in the game.

In conclusion, there were gains.
This game really resembled “Nightmare Corridor”.
And it was quite meaningful that Yoo Dahee told me about the exit at the end.

“Dahee. You said the background in this game resembles a place you know? Where is that?”

“Huh? Youngwon, you don’t know? This is Yeongji High School. No… maybe you wouldn’t know. To be exact, it’s the old school building now. The corridor and stair locations are exactly the same.”

“Have you been to the old school building?”

Us first-years started taking classes in the new school building’s classrooms as soon as we entered.
It bothered me a bit that Yoo Dahee had been to the old school building.

“It must have been when I was in elementary school. I went there once with the police. I think they were looking for something… Youngwon, can you turn the game on again? I think I’ll remember this and that if I see it.”

“Hey! Yoo Dahee! Stop lying!”

Then someone shouted.
When I turned my head, Yang Juhui, who I thought was watching the variety show, was furiously angry with a red face.
She was so heated that I thought if you put a raw egg on her forehead, it would turn into a fried egg.

Both Jeong Seok and I were startled.
We never imagined the atmosphere would suddenly become like this.

Both Jeong Seok and I were guys who had been bullied by a tough, delinquent girl, so in this situation, there was nothing we could do but tremble.
Soon, Yoo Dahee frowned.

“It’s not a lie. What did I lie about?”

“You’re lying!”

*Whoosh!*

After Yang Juhui had a big outburst, she *whoosh* left the house.
The sound of her quickly descending the stairs could be heard.

“Youngwon. I didn’t lie.”

Yoo Dahee spoke as if asking me to believe her.
Yang Juhui was getting farther away.
I felt like two choices appeared in front of me, and I had to quickly choose one.

“Ugh, damn it.”

For now, I decided to chase after Yang Juhui, who was getting farther away.
When I hurriedly ran down the stairs, Yang Juhui was squatting in front of the first-floor house.
What on earth happened?

“Hey. You. Why are you suddenly like this?”

I asked about Yang Juhui’s sudden outburst.
Yang Juhui seemed really angry and didn’t seem like she would easily open her mouth.

“Juhui. Yang Juhui. I won’t know unless you tell me what happened. Did something happen between you and Yoo Dahee after all? What was it? Try telling me. I won’t know if you don’t say anything.”

At first, I thought Yang Juhui was simply jealous of Yoo Dahee, who was pretty and rich.

To commoners and dirt spoons like Yang Juhui and me, friends like Jeong Seok and Yoo Dahee sometimes become objects of envy.
But Yang Juhui’s anger was somewhat off from my guess.

“Did Yoo Dahee lie to you before? You kept saying she lies. Kept means continuity. It means she lied this time. And she lied before.”

I asked Yang Juhui like a defense attorney cornering the culprit.
I thought it was a brilliant deduction even to myself.
Yang Juhui finally opened her mouth, probably thinking there was nowhere to run from my perfect argument.

“When my sister went missing, there was a witness. A girl the same age as me at the time. That girl’s testimony was the only evidence that could help to find my sister.”

“……”

“The police and my family trusted only that girl’s words and investigated for days. We even searched the school itself a lot after hearing she saw my sister at school late at night.”

“And then? So what happened?”

“After about a week, that bitch suddenly said she didn’t remember anything. She changed her story as if she didn’t know anything about the incident. We even used a lie detector, but she really didn’t know.”

“No way… So a kid who didn’t know anything was helping the investigation with lies?”

“Yoo Dahee, that girl is like that. I knew as soon as I saw her in high school. That it was her.”

I see…
Yang Juhui and Yoo Dahee had met when they were in elementary school.
They had such a bad relationship.

“Why did Yoo Dahee tell such a lie?”

Is it possible for an elementary school child to interfere with a missing persons investigation and confuse the investigation with false testimony simply out of mischief or curiosity?
If possible, it was some kind of malice. However… at least from what I saw, I couldn’t feel any malice from Yoo Dahee.
Rather, doesn’t she feel goodwill towards us?

“That Yoo Dahee is a liar.”

But what Yang Juhui is saying must also be a fact.
It’s a contradiction.
A spear and a shield, nothing else.

“I’m leaving. Honestly, I’ve been putting up with being with Yoo Dahee for your sake. I think I’ve done enough. If you’re going to be with her from now on, don’t call me.”

*Thud*

Yang Juhui got up from her spot.
And she disappeared far away, but I couldn’t stop her.

If in the three days that my mom disappeared, a witness appeared, and we did this and that investigation according to that testimony, and eventually that testimony was revealed to be a lie…
And if I couldn’t find Mom ever again after that?

I found out this time that there’s something called a golden time for missing person cases.
24 hours or 36 hours.
If you don’t find them within that time… the probability of finding the missing person drops exponentially.
In other words, Yang Juhui’s family wasted that golden time because of Yoo Dahee’s lie.

“It’s understandable to be angry like that.”

Thanks to the experience of a family member going missing, I empathized with Yang Juhui’s feelings, so I couldn’t call out to Yang Juhui, who was leaving.
Ugh, damn it. If I had known about this earlier, I would have just sent Yoo Dahee back or something.

*Swoosh*

I went back home up the stairs.
Jeong Seok and Yoo Dahee were waiting for me.
I asked Yoo Dahee.

“Can you tell me about what happened when you were in elementary school?”

If I hear the story from Yoo Dahee, too, it will be cross-checked.
Then Jeong Seok called me.

“Youngwon, wait a moment.”

In front of the front door.
Jeong Seok said to me.

“I don’t think it’s good to easily ask about what happened when she was in elementary school. I know well because I attended the same private elementary school as Yoo Dahee at the time… There was a big incident then…”

“Incident?”

“Anyway, I can’t say this myself. You’ll have to hear it from Yoo Dahee herself. I don’t know if she’ll tell you, though…”