FPIH Chapter 4 (Part 2)

It felt hopeless. Like a death sentence.

Jiho felt like she’d been thrown back to that moment when she’d hurt her knee. That helpless, panicked child deep inside her broke free again.

She didn’t know what she wanted to do with Go Pyeonghwa—or what she should do. The only thing that was clear was that if she kept standing there supporting him, they’d both die.

“Move, unless you wanna die too, noona.”

Startled, Jiho turned and saw An Gyumin standing again, gripping the crowbar, aiming it at her and Pyeonghwa.

Without answering, Shin Jiho glanced sideways, searching for a weapon. Unfortunately, all the deadly tools scattered across the floor were in the center of the lounge—none near her.

“If it were me, I’d just step aside. It’s not that hard. You just gotta move.”

Gyumin spoke in that same cold, expressionless tone. Jiho glared at him without responding. As the tension between them thickened, Pyeonghwa lightly tapped Jiho’s arm with his fingertips.

“Step aside.”

Pyeonghwa whispered to her. Jiho frowned and shook her head.

“And then what? Let you die?”
“I won’t die. Talking’s hard, so listen when I bother to say something…”
“Unbelievable…”

Jiho muttered and let go of her support. Not because she believed Pyeonghwa could move—but because she realized holding him back meant she couldn’t move freely either. That would just make it easier for them to get hunted.

Jiho shot a sharp glare at Gyumin. Her look said, “If you attack, I won’t stand still.”

Gyumin, on the other hand, remained expressionless. Combined with his handsome face, he looked like a wax doll.

He didn’t charge. He stood still, crowbar in hand. Jiho dared to feel a sliver of hope.

‘Two against one—he’s hesitant. Please, just go after someone else…’

She tried to act composed, putting on a bold front, but inside her head was a storm. Gyumin wasn’t the only problem—if anything, he was a small obstacle.

Honestly, it all felt hopeless. Even if they got past Gyumin, getting through the lounge was a whole different challenge. To escape the lounge, they’d need someone’s heart. One heart per person…

“Noona, you think I’m doing this because I want to?”
“Don’t talk to Jiho.”

When Gyumin spoke, Go Pyeonghwa immediately growled at him. But Gyumin ignored him and continued.

“Ah, don’t tell me you’re eyeing his heart too?”

Jiho had just thought, Why the hell is he rambling like this?—when suddenly:

“Ugh!”

A burning, searing pain flared in her side.

She looked down. A blade was lodged in her side.

Before she could even register the attacker’s face, Jiho instinctively kicked him away. The man tumbled to the floor.

In that instant, An Gyumin rushed at Pyeonghwa. He’d clearly learned not to let Pyeonghwa get close. His movements were more cautious and quicker now. Whenever Pyeonghwa so much as twitched, Gyumin immediately widened the distance between them.

‘So that’s why he was rambling—so I wouldn’t notice someone sneaking up on me!’

Jiho didn’t even have time to think about the knife stuck in her side—she just held her breath. Every time she inhaled, it felt like the blade pushed in deeper.

The man who had stabbed her began to get up from the floor, but before he could, a female student with a ponytail approached.

With no weapon of his own, the man was completely defenseless. The ponytail girl swung a baseball bat at the back of his head.

It sounded like a watermelon bursting.

Gritting her teeth, Shin Jiho sprinted toward the center of the lounge. Every movement brought a fresh wave of pain, but she had no weapon—she had to find one.

She desperately wanted to pull out the knife stuck in her side and use it, but that wasn’t realistic. The pain was one thing, but she knew if she pulled it out, the blood would gush, and she’d lose consciousness from blood loss for sure.

The closest weapon to her was a baseball bat. As Jiho bent to grab it off the floor, a bleached-haired boy swung a crowbar at her.

Jiho snatched up the bat and swiftly dodged to the side. The crowbar slammed into the ground. Pain shot up from her side, and Jiho let out a low groan.

“Urgh…”

The bleached-haired boy raised the crowbar again—but Jiho struck first. She smashed the bat into his head, and he collapsed.

Her hands trembled. Jiho’s face twisted with emotion.

She’d just hit someone.

The impact still tingled in her fingertips, and it was disgusting. Baseball bats were made for hitting baseballs, not this kind of madness. Her stomach churned, overwhelmed with a sudden wave of revulsion.

‘…Go Pyeonghwa?’

Jiho turned and staggered back toward where Pyeonghwa and Gyumin had been. Behind her, two people rushed toward the collapsed bleached-haired boy, aiming for his heart.

Pyeonghwa lay on the ground, with An Gyumin hunched over him. Gyumin’s hands moved quickly. Jiho’s breath caught in her throat. A cold chill swept over her entire body.

“An Gyumin! Get away from him!”

Jiho screamed. Her side throbbed in agony, but she couldn’t stop herself.

Gyumin stood up. In one hand, he held a kitchen knife. In the other—a lump of red flesh, dripping with blood. His body was covered in it. His face was cold, lifeless.

Jiho stared in shock, eyes darting between the bloody mass in Gyumin’s hand and the gaping hole in Pyeonghwa’s chest. If her eyes and mind weren’t lying, what Gyumin held was Pyeonghwa’s ripped-out heart.

“No!”

An Gyumin pressed Pyeonghwa’s heart to the card reader.

Beep.

The sound echoed.

Jiho stared blankly at Pyeonghwa’s body. His shirt had been ripped open, his chest drenched in blood. The light-colored fabric was now soaked in dark crimson, the original color lost.

‘It’s over.’

A knife was still lodged in her side, and her only ally—Go Pyeonghwa—was dead. All around her, the lounge was filled with slaughter.

Even if she got a heart now, could she survive the next challenge? Four chances still remained. Would it be better to give up one and return to Room 810?

With empty eyes, Jiho stared blankly at the blood spilling from Pyeonghwa’s body, soaking into the floor.

She heard the sound of a door closing. It was the sound of An Gyumin casually walking out of the lounge.

Smack.
A sharp blow struck the back of Jiho’s head. Her upper body collapsed forward.

As intense pain surged through her, Jiho’s consciousness faded, and a single thought surfaced—

‘Back to Room 810…’

From inside her pocket, her smartphone buzzed softly. Zzzzzt.

* * *

Shin Jiho’s eyes snapped open. She was sitting in a chair. On the desk in front of her was a laptop. The final sentence of her self-introduction for a game company application glowed on the screen.

“Through this process, I learned that all hardships can ultimately be overcome. Even when it seems like there’s no answer, everything always has a solution.”

It was exactly as she had written it.

Once again, Jiho was in her room. Room 810 in the women’s dormitory, before the earthquake—everything still perfectly in place. Just like last time, no one else was there. Only Shin Jiho.

“Go Pyeonghwa…”

Thinking about Pyeonghwa’s corpse, heart ripped out, made her gag. Ugh. She bent forward, dry heaving. Her face flushed red. All she’d had was coffee, so nothing came up.

Was she disgusted? Scared? Angry? Sad? …She didn’t know.

Jiho couldn’t even tell what she was feeling anymore. But one thing was clear—she never wanted to witness something like that again.

With her face flushed red, Jiho slapped her own cheeks hard—over and over.

“Get it together, get it together… It’s over? Yeah right.”

She couldn’t forgive herself. She was furious at her own weakness—for giving up the moment Go Pyeonghwa died. Shin Jiho had always been alone. She’d always overcome things by herself.

No matter what, she should’ve dragged herself across the floor, knife in her side, and made it through that lounge. Even just seeing what kind of challenge awaited beyond would’ve made the next attempt easier. At the very least, she should’ve gotten a clue about Room 721’s location.

“Idiot, moron, total dumbass…”

Jiho muttered, cheeks burning red from her own slaps.

Then, the floor began to shake. It was her third earthquake.

By now, she knew—there wouldn’t be any unexpected surprises. In that disturbingly familiar chaos, Shin Jiho calmly regained her rational mind.

It was time to begin again.

This wasn’t the time to sit still. Jiho stood up. She grabbed her smartphone and ducked under the desk.

Like marbles tossed around by a giant, everything shook violently. Items stored away came crashing down like rain, and whatever had been on the floor rolled around like dry leaves.

With one hand braced on the desk, Jiho reflexively checked her phone screen.

[ Remaining chances: 3 ]
[ Relationship with Go Pyeonghwa: College classmate / Acquaintance since freshman year. ]

“What? Why is this still the same?”

Jiho’s eyes widened in shock.

She had expected the “Remaining chances” to drop from 4 to 3—that had happened last time too, after she died. But what puzzled her was the “Relationship with Go Pyeonghwa” entry.

Everything else had reset to the beginning, so the relationship with Go Pyeonghwa should’ve returned to its original state as well… but it still said “college classmate.”

‘What is this…? Don’t tell me the “relationship with Go Pyeonghwa” doesn’t reset even if I return to the beginning?’

Jiho thought back to a console game she’d played before.

It was an action game where the player would start over from the beginning upon death. There were Normal and Easy modes. In Easy mode, even if you died and started over, the abilities you’d built up during the playthrough remained intact.

“…What if Go Pyeonghwa also remembers the previous round, like I do?”

A sudden chill ran down her spine at the thought. She couldn’t tell if that would be a good or bad thing.

Jiho shook her head—then tilted it in confusion.

Go Pyeonghwa’s smartphone hadn’t shown any message. Based on that alone, the odds were low that he experienced time loops like she did. But still, the fact that he was mentioned on her smartphone meant Pyeonghwa might be a special case, too.

“Why me… and why Go Pyeonghwa of all people?”

When the girl with the broom died, when Hwang Siwoon died, when Go Pyeonghwa died—time hadn’t turned back. Only when Jiho died did everything rewind to right before the earthquake.

She didn’t yet understand what role Pyeonghwa played in this time loop, but one thing was certain: the flow of time in the dormitory revolved around Shin Jiho.

‘What makes me different from the others? Why is this only happening to me…?’

There had to be some crucial difference.

The announcements applied universal rules to everyone in the building. But the words written on Jiho’s smartphone were rules meant only for her. The announcement spoke of “judgment,” but the smartphone spoke to Jiho of “choice.”

When the time came, would she face judgment—or make a choice? She didn’t know, but she was curious.

‘If I’m the only one who survives, what happens to the others? Do they go to hell? Or what if someone who died in a previous loop survives this time—and someone who survived ends up dead instead? Then wouldn’t I be the reason heaven and hell swap for those people? And what if I die all five times? What happens then? What about Go Pyeonghwa? Does he follow the same rules as the others?’

Thinking about Pyeonghwa again made her uneasy. He had saved her life twice—once from Amon, and once in the lounge.

Even in the direst circumstances, Pyeonghwa never betrayed her. They say you can’t truly know someone’s heart, but Go Pyeonghwa had proven his through death.

‘Right now, he’s the most trustworthy person here. Someone I can work with… at least for now.’

It’d be a lie to say she wasn’t moved. No one had ever risked their life for her before.

But what if the “Relationship with Go Pyeonghwa” entry changed again?

From “stranger,” to “barely-acquainted college classmate,” to “college classmate”—so far, it had shifted toward familiarity and friendliness. But that might not continue.

One day it could suddenly say “sworn enemy.” That worried her. If that happened, who knows how Pyeonghwa might change. And since a change in the entry also meant a change in Pyeonghwa’s memories, he’d be completely at the mercy of false memories.

‘I can’t let that happen. That would be the worst-case scenario.’

Without realizing it, Jiho let out a deep sigh and bit her lip.

The thought of Go Pyeonghwa stabbing her in the back—Jiho didn’t even want to imagine it. She just hoped things would stay exactly as they were now.

While reading and analyzing the text on her screen, the earthquake stopped. Knowing there wouldn’t be any aftershocks for a while, Jiho slipped out from under the desk without hesitation.

『Attention. You are all dead. Judgment will now begin. Shortly, floors 8, 9, and 10 of both the women’s and men’s dormitories will be sealed.』

As the familiar announcement echoed, Jiho strode toward the shoe cabinet. She listened carefully, wondering if the broadcast might change even slightly—but it was exactly the same as before, not a single word out of place.

Just like last time—and the time before that—the shoe cabinet had toppled. Jiho pulled out her sneakers and the badminton racket trapped underneath.

‘What now? Going out without a plan is suicide. I’ll just die again like before…’

Marbas and Amon didn’t worry her much anymore. She’d gotten past them before, and if she repeated the same actions, she could get through again. The real problem was the lounge—and Room 721 in the men’s dormitory.

She still had no idea where Room 721 was. On top of that, even though she understood the general flow of the 12-person bloodbath in the lounge, surviving it was a different story entirely.

『Once again, attention. You are all dead. Judgment will now begin. Shortly, floors 8, 9, and 10 of both the women’s and men’s dormitories will be sealed. Thank you.』

As the announcement echoed throughout the dorm, Jiho fell deep into thought.

‘If I don’t want to make the same mistake, I need to start putting this puzzle together again from the beginning. What should I have done? Where did it all go wrong?’

Jiho replayed the events of the 7th-floor lounge in her mind like reviewing a match.

The lounge had the armored demon, nine people, and various weapons scattered across the floor. Everyone was frozen stiff, like statues. The moment Jiho entered, she was hit by the car crash illusion and lost control of her body. Her body moved on its own, stopping at the center of the lounge. Unlike her, Go Pyeonghwa never lost control.

When the twelfth person entered, the demon clapped. That was when control returned. The demon had said: 『Take out one person each to pass. Present their heart to the reader.』

The lounge doors were locked. Dorm access cards didn’t work. According to the demon, you had to offer someone else’s heart to open them—and since An Gyumin had opened the door using Pyeonghwa’s heart, the demon’s words were true.

After that, a slaughter began among the twelve. Gyumin had targeted Jiho, and when Pyeonghwa tried to save her, he was struck with a crowbar. Gyumin then shifted his focus to Pyeonghwa.

While facing off against Gyumin, Jiho had been ambushed and stabbed in the side. Gyumin used that moment to attack Pyeonghwa again. While Jiho was searching for a weapon, Pyeonghwa was killed by Gyumin. Soon after, Jiho was killed by another attacker.

‘No matter how I think about it, the only real chance is right after I get control of my body back.’

Before that, she couldn’t move at all—there was nothing she could’ve done. The moment control returned, she had to attack first—strike the easiest target.

‘If I absolutely have to kill someone to get out, then the easiest target would be…’

Jiho mentally ran through the faces of everyone who’d been in the lounge. Eleven faces flickered and blurred in her mind before coming together again.

‘They need to be close. Off guard. Someone who’d never expect me to strike…’

One person came to mind who fit every condition perfectly.