FPIH Chapter 1 (Part 3)

The announcement had said, You have all died. It had also spoken of judgment.

“Death, judgment, demons….”

Piecing the keywords together, only one thought naturally came to mind.

Hell.

Jiho lightly slapped her own cheeks. Her mind kept wandering in useless directions—she needed to focus. The most important thing right now was how to get out of this situation.

‘My phone’s useless, so I can’t contact anyone outside….’

“Ah, that’s right…!”

Her laptop and the dorm’s internal phone suddenly came to mind.

Jiho decided to check the internal phone first. Every dorm room had an old landline phone, mainly used for contacting the security office or administration.

She rummaged through her roommate’s desk and found the phone buried under a desk calendar.

“Please…”

With a pounding heart, she picked up the receiver and quickly dialed 119.

Nothing.

There was no sound, not even a dial tone.

Frowning, she put the receiver down and picked it up again. Silence.

She repeated the action several times, dialing different numbers just in case, but it was no use.

Just to be sure, she checked the phone cord—it was perfectly intact.

“Did the power go out?”

Jiho looked up at the ceiling. The fluorescent lights were still on.

The electricity was working.

“Then what’s the problem…?”

Jiho plugged the phone’s cord in and out of the socket, but there was no change. The phone remained completely unresponsive. She had no choice but to give up on it.

But there was still hope.

Jiho searched for her laptop. It had fallen to the floor during the earthquake. Thankfully, it looked undamaged. Letting out a relieved sigh, she carefully placed it back on the desk.

She opened the laptop—only to be met with a black screen.

A bad feeling crept up her spine. Normally, the screen should have lit up as soon as she opened it.

She pressed and held the power button.

Nothing.

The laptop wouldn’t turn on at all.

“Come on, please…!”

Desperation creeping in, Jiho pressed the button over and over, until frustration took over and she slammed her fist against the desk.

Pain shot through her hand, but it did nothing to ease her anger.

Stay calm. Stay calm…. Jiho bit back her tears, whispering to herself inside her mind.

She took in shaky breaths, forcing herself to think rationally.

She had two choices.

First, she could stay hidden in her room and wait for someone—whether it was the school administration, the government, or anyone—to handle the situation.

Second, she could take the risk and try to escape the eighth floor.

‘In this situation, staying put seems like the logical choice….’

She had no idea what was happening outside the dormitory, but surely someone out there would step in to restore order.

“Yes, and…”

Though she couldn’t be entirely sure, it seemed like Marbas only targeted people who stepped into the hallway. He didn’t appear to care about those who stayed inside their rooms.

That meant staying silent and hidden had a high chance of keeping her safe.

However, Jiho couldn’t shake off the nagging doubt crawling over her skin like a rash.

In an irrational situation, was the rational decision truly the right one?

“The announcement… it said the 8th floor would be sealed.”

She had no idea what sealed meant in this context, but it definitely didn’t sound like a good thing.

If she hesitated too long, she might end up trapped on the sealed 8th floor.

Another thing worried her—the state of the building.

She glanced around at the wrecked room.

‘If an aftershock hits, will the building even hold up?’

The cracked walls and shattered windows only fueled her unease. It looked as though everything could come crashing down at any moment.

But leaving now posed a serious problem.

Since the emergency exit was locked, the only way out was through the staircase near the elevator lobby.

Taking the elevator wasn’t even an option—it was too dangerous, and she had no time to wait for it.

And then there was the issue.

To reach the lobby stairs, Jiho would have to cross the entire hallway—right past the creature standing in the middle of it.

‘Can I even make it…?’

No matter how fast she was, Marbas was agile—much faster than any human.

‘What do I do?’

If only she could come up with some brilliant plan. But with her ordinary brain, nothing clever came to mind.

Jiho looked around the room.

A purple curtain fluttered in the breeze. A toppled chair. Scattered textbooks. A dustpan. A short broom. A messy bed. A black piece of paper. A badminton racket. A broken clock, its hands frozen in place. A communal drying rack. A snapped desk lamp….

Out of everything, the only potential weapon was the flimsy badminton racket. And she didn’t even know where the other one was.

Even as Jiho scanned the room, more screams, curses, and cries echoed from the hallway. Each time, she flinched.

She picked up the badminton racket and turned it over in her hands, her expression grim.

“…Maybe I can use this.”

If she swung it at Marbas to create an opening, she might be able to sprint past him and escape the eighth floor.

But what if the badminton racket wasn’t even remotely threatening to him?

What if he managed to catch her?

The image of the girl from Room 820 resurfaced in her mind—the way her body had grotesquely twisted, the sound of her bones snapping, the bloodcurdling scream that had ripped from her throat.

Jiho shuddered.

For a terrifying moment, she imagined her own face in place of the girl’s.

Cold sweat trickled down her back.

Jiho knew better than anyone that life was a series of choices. She had always made her own decisions, from trivial things like picking a lunch menu to major choices that shaped her future. She had taken responsibility for every single one.

But—

“To live or to die…”

This was the first time a choice literally meant life or death.

The weight of the decision crushed her, suffocating like an invisible hand pressing down on her chest. A wave of dizziness hit her. She sank to the floor, clutching her head.

Time was ticking away.

The announcement had said the eighth floor would be sealed soon. But how soon was soon?

Her mind was spinning in circles, getting nowhere, while her body remained frozen in fear.

With her sweat-soaked face, Jiho finally lifted her head.

‘Going outside is not an option. The risk is too high.’

Jiho couldn’t tell whether this conclusion was a rational decision or if fear had forced her into it.

But one thing was certain—she could not step into that hallway.

That left only one choice: stay inside and wait for rescue.

She picked up the badminton racket from the floor again and pressed her back against the wall beside the door, gripping the handle like a sword.

If anything entered this room—Marbas, or any other creature—she would ambush them.

The hallway was quiet now. Time crawled forward unbearably slow. The tension locked in her muscles made her shoulders and neck ache.

‘When is help coming? How long do I have to wait?’

Her throat was dry. She swallowed repeatedly, but it didn’t help.

Bzzzzt—

A burst of static crackled through the dormitory speakers. Jiho’s eyes instinctively flicked to the ceiling.

『Attention, please. The 8th, 9th, and 10th floors of both the female and male dormitories will now be sealed.』

The moment the announcement ended, the floor shook violently.

An earthquake—again. But this time, it was far stronger than before.

Jiho’s face turned pale.

She didn’t even have time to duck under the desk before she lost her balance and fell.

Her hands hit the ground first, saving her from a head injury.

Something sharp, possibly glass shards, jabbed into her palms—but she barely felt it.

The walls cracked at an alarming rate.

The shoe cabinet toppled forward first.

Then, the wardrobe.

It was falling straight toward her.

Jiho rolled to the side just in time.

“Ah…!”

At that moment, the ceiling collapsed. A searing pain struck Jiho’s body. Her stomach? Head? Legs? Where was it? The pain was so overwhelming that she couldn’t even tell where she was hurt. She tried to scream, but no sound came out.

Only a strange, wheezing noise escaped her lips, like air leaking from a punctured balloon. It felt like her lungs had been crushed or pierced. A thick cloud of dust rose around her. She couldn’t open her eyes. Her consciousness was slipping away fast.

Is this death? Jiho wondered.

Her smartphone buzzed.

* * *

Jiho’s eyes flew open.

She was sitting in her chair.

On the desk in front of her was her laptop, displaying the last sentence of her self-introduction for the game company application—exactly as she had written it.

Confused, Jiho shot up from her seat and looked around.

It was a familiar place.

Room 810 of the women’s dormitory—her room.

Her roommates were nowhere to be seen.

“What…?”

Everything was perfectly intact.

The clock that had fallen and shattered was back in place. The cereal box that had been knocked over was standing upright. The broken window was whole again. There wasn’t a single crack on the walls.

It was as if the earthquake had never happened.

Jiho ran her hands over her body—her thighs, her stomach, her ribs, her head.

No wounds. No pain.

“Was it a dream? Did I just doze off and have some crazy nightmare?”

She must have fallen asleep while working on her self-introduction.

Jiho let out a hollow laugh. Right… demons? That’s ridiculous.

She forced herself to ignore the unsettlingly vivid memories of the dream.

Sitting back down, she wrapped her arms around her legs.

‘I never want to have that nightmare again….’

It had been horrifying. Even though it was just a dream, she felt mentally drained.

Boom—

Suddenly, the floor started shaking.

The desk, the bed, the wardrobe—everything in the room trembled violently.

The wheels of her chair rolled on their own, trying to slip away. Instinctively, Jiho grabbed onto the desk.

For a moment, she just clung to it, completely frozen.

The events from her dream were unfolding again in real life. She couldn’t believe it.

Amidst her shock, her gaze landed on her smartphone lying on the desk.

Snapping back to her senses, she quickly grabbed it and crawled under the desk.

A cereal box tumbled to the floor. One by one, objects began to fall.

Her alarm clock crashed down, shattering on impact and rolling across the floor.

With one hand gripping the desk leg, she used the other to check her phone screen.

[Remaining chances: 4]
[Relationship with Go Pyeonghwa: Strangers / You do not know each other yet.]

A cold wave of realization crashed over her.

The deafening rumble of the earthquake, the sound of things breaking and falling—it was all real.

Jiho whispered to herself.

“This isn’t a dream.”

The number had gone down.

She had five chances before.

Now, there were only four.

She had died once. That’s why the number had decreased.

Jiho’s body trembled violently. The raw, vivid pain from before surged through her nerves like phantom pain, coursing through her entire body. In its wake, goosebumps prickled her skin.

“It wasn’t a dream!”

She screamed as if trying to expel the fear from her lungs.

Despite it not being winter, a biting cold gripped her. Her fingers stiffened, and a deep chill seeped into her bones.

Then—the earthquake stopped.

Shivering, she anxiously waited for what would come next.

‘The announcement should play now.’

She was certain. She predicted it, yet she desperately prayed that, just this once, she would be wrong.

『Attention, please.』

Right on cue, the voice rang through the speakers.

Jiho clenched her face in anguish.

Tears streamed down her cheeks—tears she hadn’t even shed when she died.

『You have all died. Judgment will now begin. In a moment, the 8th, 9th, and 10th floors of both the female and male dormitories will be sealed.』

This wasn’t a nightmare.

A cruel, merciless reality was staring her down with cold, unrelenting eyes.