There are three things an adult absolutely needs to survive in this rather boring and depressing world. One is, without a doubt, food and water.
"Aren't food and water two things?"
He questioned for a bit but decided to move on with it. Secondly, it's being able to find life interesting, and the last thing is... finding entertaining stuff that keeps you interested in living.
Lim Soohyun, who was in his thirties now, followed these rules for almost all his adult life. After barely managing to work for eight hours a day while smoking multiple packs of cigarettes, he always clocked out on time and ventured out into the city to find entertainment, sometimes through attractions like an amusement park, and other times he'd walk the night streets of Gangnam, which would always be crowded.
The more people, the more entertaining it would be. Yesterday, he bought an experimental meal set with a rainbow smoothie that tasted like barf. As he drank it, he watched a couple break up with tears and juice, dunking closely, almost as if he was third-wheeling.
"That was fun."
Lim Soohyun recalled as he continued walking. It had been two hours already, and he had yet to find anything entertaining. He slowed down his steps and searched everywhere. If he really didn't find any amusement in the next ten minutes, he'd just have to book a ticket to the new haunted house that opened today.
"But what's the fun in watching those clearly fake props and people disguised as ghosts?"
And even worse, all they can do is give the entrants jump scares with previously practiced screams. It'd be more fun if they could at least catch him, drag him forcefully, and lock him up so he'd have to run to truly survive and escape. How much more fun would that be?
Just when he was about to pull out his phone to book a ticket for the haunted house anyway, at that moment, he suddenly saw a strangely dressed, random-ass man with an even more random gashapon. The machine had no labels or stickers to advertise what was inside the multicolored capsule balls.
The anonymity intrigued him. He was soon standing in front of the gashapon, examining how to work it. The man, who was crouching down beside the gashapon in the same position as him right now, must've noticed he was interested, as he started explaining how to work the gashapon without him initiating a conversation.
"The money goes into that metal pocket. You need 100,000 won for a single try. You only get to do it once, however, and not everyone gets one."
Lim Soohyun didn't bother asking the man why it was so expensive or why he couldn't try again. Actually, was this gashapon machine's dispenser broken? Why would he get nothing? Well, even if it was a scam to draw money out of people like him, he willingly gave the money to the gashapon. Stuffing it with the notes, he nervously swallowed hard as he twisted the dial button to the left.
THUD.
A pink capsule ball dropped down to the slot. Lim Soohyun exhaled his breath, breaking into a smile. He got one. The man moved before he could, taking out the capsule ball from the slot. He handed it to him without a word. Unfolding his knees, Lim Soohyun stood back on his feet with his newly possessed possession.
The pleasant feeling of not knowing what to expect was greater than everything for his enjoyment. Holding the capsule ball in his hand, Lim Soohyun passed the overly busy street. While walking, he opened the capsule, turning it gently once. The weight of the capsule ball was light, so he wasn't expecting too much, but he also didn't think there would only be this much inside.
A piece of pink gum the size of one-third of his finger and a note the size of his palm—that was all he got. He glanced back at the man who should've been in the same spot, but there was no one crouching down with a gashapon machine there. He wanted to ask if this was what people normally got from his gashapon.
Lim Soohyun didn't read the note until he was back in his one-bedroom apartment in Gangnam. After washing up, he finally picked up the note as he dried himself with a towel with his left hand.
"Instructions: 1. Buy a haunted house. 2. Spend the night in the haunted house. After finishing these tasks, you will be promoted to the next step. After a promotion, you will receive points with which you can get another capsule and continue playing the quests."
Most people wouldn't be amused by such a childish note, but Lim Soohyun also didn't belong into the most people category. Thinking it was only reasonable, the next day he quit his job, searched for the most haunted house on the market in South Korea, and bought it after selling everything he owned.
A few days later, he got into his car with a suitcase after getting the keys to his newly bought haunted house and drove to Yeongdeok County. The house he had bought was situated on a hillside. A foreign family built the house for themselves. From the pictures he had seen online, it seemed like a typical Western haunted house, the type you'd see in a horror movie.
"How perfect."
By the time he located the house in the middle of nowhere, it was already dark outside. Parking near the entrance of the house, he grabbed his suitcase and unlocked the front door with a key while using his phone's flashlight since the lights in the house were off, and, being an old house, it didn't have any automatic sensory lights. It was a cloudy night; even the moonlight was hidden, and everything was shrouded in darkness.
Pushing the door open, Lim Soohyun flashed the phone's light inside first. It was pin-drop quiet inside, and small particles of dust were visibly floating in the air. All he saw was the stairs to the upstairs and a long hallway. At the end of the hallway, there seemed to be a kitchen. He could make out chairs.
"Whatever."
Lim Soohyun lifted his suitcase with one hand and the flashlight with the other as he walked into the house. Leaving his suitcase at the entrance, he closed the front door, making sure it was locked well, and decided to explore the house with the flashlight. The room to his left was an open living room; the sofas were covered with a white cloth, and immeasurable dust was upon those cloths. Walking around, the living room led to the kitchen, also open, with two doorways.
Facing the sink, there was a window on the wall. It was completely open, and dining chairs were raised onto the dining table upside down.
Lim Soohyun stopped before the chairs and flashed the light back into the hallway to the front door. This is exactly what he had seen, but didn't he see the chairs on the ground upright just now?
"Nah, it was too dark to see clearly."
As a skeptic, he wasn't going to freak out over it and rule it out as the work of a ghost. Closing the window too, Lim Soohyun made his way upstairs. He gave the rooms a quick glance and randomly selected a bedroom to spend the night in. He wasn't going to start cleaning up; he needed to make up his mind if he was really going to live here and that the quests were real, not just a joke.
Not even bothering to unpack, Lim Soohyun turned on the light of the bedroom with a double bed. Throwing his phone, with the flashlight off, on the bed, he threw his shirt to the sofa chair and jumped into the bed. Who knew when these sheets were last washed? A cloud of dust probably came out of the bed as he got in, but Lim Soohyun didn't care. It was just for a night, and he was also tired after the long drive here.
Lim Soohyun pillowed the back of his head with his hands, staring at the light on the ceiling.
Should I turn it off?
"..."
He was usually one to sleep in darkness, but he also didn't want to sleep in a presumably haunted house, not being able to see anything. Keeping the light on, Lim Soohyun turned to his side, gazing at the open door of the bedroom. The other side of the door was just pure black, with only some of the light brightening the threshold.
Lim Soohyun soon fell asleep, but his eyes were fixed on the doorway. Thinking he was asleep, he didn't know why he could still see the doorway. As he kept staring at it, his vision began to blur, and just then, a black shadow of a person peeked through the door. He tried to blink to clear his vision, but he couldn't, and the shadow of the person was looking at him for a moment before it hid away again.
Was there another person in the house other than him?