THE STAIRCASE CODE: Through theMirror Darkly

Had they given up?

Just as I was breathing a sigh of relief, my father's voice rang out suddenly-

「Dad has seen you pretending to be asleep.」

I shuddered and burrowed my head out.

Their shadows were cast very narrowly through the doorway.

I stared at their shadows and suddenly felt very awkward.

Because the shadow I saw was their legs.

If it was a normal person, the topmost part of the shadow should be the head.

But instead, what I saw were two legs.

At this moment, it was as if my blood had frozen for a moment.

They were upside down.

So they could see my every move.

I trembled and slumped down.

I saw two pairs of eyes under the doorway-

staring straight at me.

At this moment, I was nervous to the core.

But I had to keep my composure.

I picked up my cell phone that had fallen on the floor, self-consciously, 「Why did the phone fall on the floor?」

My hands, however, were trembling uncontrollably.

Because out of the corner of my eye I glimpsed that they were still watching me.

Deadly staring at me.

At that moment, I heard the sound of a key being inserted in the lock.

My heart was in my throat.

The next second, the door opened.

My parents stood outside the door, smiling at me.

Their smiles were very strange.

It was obviously a smile, but their eyes didn't have a single curve to them.

Their heads were tilted at forty-five degrees, smiling at me.

A dangerous intuition told me that I needed to get out of here right away.

But I was a step too late.

My mother's bony hands slammed into my hair.

She narrowed her eyes, her overly dark and narrow pupils looking at me dead on.

「When did your hair grow so long, didn't mom say you weren't allowed to grow it?」

My scalp was yanked raw.

My mother's strength was so great that it was as if she wanted to yank my entire hair off.

They forced me to my knees.

The rusty machete was across my neck.

「Lucy, father has said that disobedient children are punished.”」My father's narrowed eyes glared at me, the corners of his mouth grinning almost to the back of his ears.

For a moment, the fear of death made me stiffen.

In desperation, I shouted, 「Brother's coming!」

I heard a 「click」.

My parents' heads turned a hundred and eighty degrees.

I could hear the creepy sound of a skull breaking.

Taking advantage of this moment, I ran violently towards the toilet.

The light in the restroom was on, shrouded in a reddish glow.

【The restroom was the only safe place, just like when we were kids and they didn't know we were hiding in the restroom】

【But remember, the restroom light is yellow】

Wait, yellow?!

I paused with my hand in mid-air.

A scarlet red light came through the frosted glass.

「Lucy, hiding in the toilet again like when you were a kid?」

My father's voice came from behind me.

He approached me without slowing down, a chilling smile on that face.

I sensed something was wrong.

He wasn't charging at me, like he had before.

Instead, it was like he was expecting something.

If the toilet was truly safe at this moment, then he would have done everything he could to prevent me from going in.

Unless the glowing red toilet was unsafe.

But I had to divert his eyes.

I placed my hand on the doorknob of the restroom and slowly turned it downward.

Sure enough, I saw the grin widening on my father's face.

The very moment the door was about to be opened by me, I quickly ran towards the front door, opened it as fast as I could, and rushed out.

The moment the door closed, I saw my father's spiteful and resigned face.

I let out a long sigh of relief.

This meant that he would not be able to come out for a while.

There was a code written on the white paper my brother gave me:

【If you leave the house, your parents can't follow you for a while.】

But I didn't have time to relax.

What presented itself to me was the narrow hallway I was familiar with.

The walls were plastered with the same dog-eared advertisement paper as in the real building.

Even that cat search notice was hanging on the wall.

The incandescent light overhead was obviously old, flickering and emitting the sound of electric current.

The hallway was too quiet.

Originally, the soundproofing here was extremely poor.

Every time I came back from school, I could hear the sounds of mahjong, husband and wife quarrelling, television, and children crying.

But now the hallway was dead silent.

So quiet that I could only hear my own thunderous heartbeat.