The Tomb Of My Heart | SF9

十四

As soon as I woke up the next day, I knew that today was going to be the most important day of our expedition. If we don't find our friends and a way out of here, we're as good as dead, I thought. With so little food and no access to the civilization, chances of surviving didn't seem so high, but I still prayed and hoped for the best.

After we got ready and had an almost nonexistent breakfast, the rest of us who were still at the hotel were standing together at the hall, getting ready to start searching.

"Are you ready?" I heard Juho whispering to me.

"No. But it's not important now, is it? We just gotta find Jaeyoon and Sanghyuk and get out of here somehow, that's all that matters at the moment." I said.

"I agree." He said. "I'm seriously starting to get sick of this whole expedition."

When my eyes met with Youngkyun's, I gave him a questioning look, asking him if he was okay. Ever since he opened up to me last night, I was worried about him. What he had told me was a serious issue and I could only imagine the pain that he had been dealing with all this time.

Luckily, he gave me a weak smile, signaling me that everything was fine, so I smiled back.

Then, I turned to Youngbin.

"Good luck today." I said. "We pretty much depend on you finding the nearest town and bringing the police here."

"No pressure, huh?" He smiled.

"No pressure at all." I said, hugging him in order to give him some strenght.

"Alright." Mr. Jung said. "If you guys are ready, it's time to leave. As we said yesterday, Mrs. Kwon, Youngbin and I will be going to the nearest town, or at least we'll try, and the rest of you will continue on with searching the tombs together with Zhang Ming. It's now or never, guys, so I really wish all of you best of luck."

After we said goodbye to each other, it was time for us to go.

Everyone was quiet on the way to the tombs. No one was really in the mood for chatting in this serious situation, because we all feared what would happen if we didn't find them. Alive or not, we couldn't just leave them here and go back to Korea. After all, I was sure that they were, in fact, still alive.

After what seemed like an eternity, we finally arrived in front of an old ruined tomb that never looked bigger or scarier.

"What now?" I heard Chanhee whisper behind me.

"Now we go down there and see what faith has prepared for us." I said, waiting for Zhang Ming to give us a sign. After he finally did so, we entered the dark hallway.

*

I didn't know how much time has passed since we entered, or if we were ever in this part of the tomb. At this point, it all seemed familiar.

All of a sudden, I felt something strange near me in this dark, but I couldn't exactly tell what it was. My heart started beating faster and I knew that I needed to hide somewhere. It was like an instinct that was trying to tell me that something bad was going to happen.

"Juho?" I whispered, but I got no response, which freaked me out even more.

I was wondering whether or not I should raise panic about Juho not being here, but my inner voice seemed to have a better idea. Therefore, when I made sure that no one was watching, I slipped inside one of the cracks on the wall that was deep enough for me to hide in and I waited there for a couple of minutes, enough for the group to move on down the hallway.

At that moment, I couldn't even explain why I did it, but I just knew that, If I didn't, something bad would have happened to me.

I closed my eyes, trying not to think about all the spiders that might've been in this crack together with me and also trying not to think about getting lost. I memorised the path, after all. I had nothing to be scared of.

Just as I was about to come out and continue walking, I heard something, so I stayed inside. It seemed like a sound of footsteps, along with the sound of something being dragged. I also couldn't help but feel a strange smell that I couldn't really identify.

When the mysterious person walked past me, I thought that my heart was going to explode or jump out of my chest, but I still had to act calm, or else they would spot me hiding there.

After what seemed to be the longest minute of my entire life, I decided to sneak out and continue walking in the opposite direction, where our group was originally headed to.

*

All paths seemed similar in this poor lighting that my flashlight was able to provide. It also seemed that it would die any second, so I had to move faster. I focused on my hearing in hopes of hearing some familiar voices, but the only thing that actually came to my senses was that wierd smell from earlier that was now even stronger.

I slowly started to lose hope, but after a few more minutes off walking, I finally started to notice some changes. The corridor started getting wider, so I guessed that I was near a room of some kind. And I was right. After just a few more steps, I entered the biggest room so far. It was full of huge rocks that were departed from the walls and therefore it was kind of hard to reach the center of the room.

But when I finally did so, I had quite a sight to see.

"Jaein, whatch out!" Youngkyun yelled as soon as he saw me.

I was confused to see him on his knees at first. But then I realised that he wasn't the only one. Youngkyun, Inseong and Seokwoo, the only remaining people in the room were all on their knees.

All except for Taeyang, who was standing still with a lifeless expression. When I got closer, I noticed that he had a gun in his hand.

And that gun was pointed at Inseong's forehead.