I Couldn't Tell You Who It Was

I guess my overall impression was also like that. Even Yeonseon, who was careful to talk about others, told me that I looked so indifferent to the comings and goings of the world that I would stand surety for anyone if I were asked to. I had to retort, then wasn’t that just looking dumb, not indifferent?

“You were interested in this kind of thing?”

“A bit,” I said, then added a decent reason, “since scary stories on the internet are trending these days.”

Although, specifically, I was interested in the story about that mansion.

I thought back to the large mansion that I was trapped in when I was younger. I remembered antique furniture that filled the interior, elaborate wall décor, and a chandelier that was hard to see these days. The cog of a large cuckoo clock that made a heavy clicking with every movement of the second hand, the desk lamp that looked like flower petals and leaves, and the ceramic teacups and teapot on top of the table with soft curves—I remembered them all.

I wondered if Woorim’s acquaintance who dreamed of the mansion with 101 doors also saw those.

The popular urban legend about the mansion with 101 doors was very similar to my experience. I wasn’t sure if the mansion I was in had exactly 101 doors, since “a hundred” was just a figure of speech to express large numbers in general. It was more accurate to say that this legend was about a house with countless doors.

There were already a lot of strange stories related to the number 101 circulating—stories about how people would gather in the night in the dark and share scary stories, but the 101st story was told by a ghost. There was another about how people would tell scary stories with 100 candles lit and blow out one after each story, then after turning off all 100 candles, there would always be one lit candle left.

All these stories had one thing in common. The point was that there was always one thing remaining after the first 100.

Following that, the 101st door in this urban legend was also unique from the previous 100 doors. Considering that, I thought that maybe instead of 101 doors, it would be more appropriate to call it 101 rooms since that last room didn’t have a door.

Popular urban myths always had a forbidden action involved, such as don’t look back, don’t move, don’t answer, or don’t look up. This myth was the same. Unsurprisingly, it was related to the room without the door.

Never enter the room without a door.

Perhaps it was because there were 101 doors involved, but the story spread widely and with variations. Among those, people talked about their dreams and recorded the types of doors there were. There were a total of 47 doors recorded so far. There seemed to be an addendum that red or black doors had a curse that made you die not long after entering.

Woorim’s acquaintance apparently opened and entered through a pale, bluish door. They said that they saw their sleeping self there. The mansion legend mixed in elements of out-of-body experiences, so it was a relatively common type of story on the internet.

According to Woorim, the moment his friend saw their body, they thought, ‘Oh no, this is bad.’ They tried to do everything to get back into their body.

Fortunately, they were able to return to their body, but at that moment, they heard someone mumble in disappointment, “So close.” After waking up, they hurriedly turned on the lights and looked in the mirror. Both their arms and ankles had big bruises in the shape of human hands, and that was how the story ended.

I wasn’t interested in the contents of the nightmare that Woorim’s friend dreamed about. What I was interested in was whether that person really dreamed about the mansion.

Woorim tossed his cigarette, which was burned to the stub. “Hmmm…” he hummed, hesitant to answer me. “Well, we’re going to meet again next week anyway.”

I then realized that he wasn’t going to answer me easily. He grinned, clearly looking devious. “I’ll tell you if we get friendlier next week.”

He extended his hand to me. He added in a friendly voice, “Let’s shake hands.”

I had no choice but to shake his hand as he wished. There was a saying that smoking lowered your body temperature, so maybe that was why I thought that his hand that I grasped felt cold.

As I gazed at the other’s hand that tightly clasped mine, I recalled the day I first met Yeonseon. Yeonseon also smiled like Woorim and extended his hand to me, saying, “Let’s get along.” I remember feeling relieved that his hands were as cold as my nervous hands.