No. She has seen it before.

Maybe to someone else, but never towards her…

‘Ah.’

Won swallowed a groan at her realization.

He has been smiling in front of her all this time, so she has taken it for granted. It was habitual to her, so the sight of him without a smile is foreign. Looking at his face without a smile makes her feel isolated.

She clenched and unclenched her fist slowly.

‘I’ve been careless for a while now.’

It wasn’t as if she relied on him to smile. If he doesn’t smile, she can just point that out and leave it at that.

He is only a temporary collaborator who she has joined hands with for a purpose. There is no reason to be shaken by him. She must not allow herself to lose her composure.

“I need to find someone, too.”

Top Dog said, flipping back his bangs. The sleeves of his scrubs slid up, revealing the tattoo of a snake curling around his muscular left arm.

“They should be in this ward, but they’re nowhere to be soon. So, I have to search the secret room.”

An idea popped into her head, so Won hesitated and asked.

“Was his name… Seo Hee-Hyun?”

Top Dog stared at her. Just when she was feeling pressure from his unsmiling gaze, he spoke in a casual tone.

“You don’t need to know that, do you?”

For some reason, the words made her heart move in a strange way. It wasn’t a dramatic response, like a sinking or fluttering feeling, but like a tiny spark of static inside her chest. It was definitely not a good feeling.

She recognized she was shocked by his response, and became shocked again. The reason why was that she didn’t believe he wouldn’t tell her.

Honestly, she expected him to confirm or deny. He’d be all smiles and bullshit like, “Is that what you were wondering? Is my pretty girl finally interested in her oppa?” because that’s the Top Dog she knew.

Won realized she had been complacent and that he wouldn’t do as she wanted. He wouldn’t bend to her will, and it was clear why she believed in the myth that he will.

“I melt the good stuff gently. I don’t see why it’s so easy for me to do this, especially when everyone else’s tongue gets numb from going on and on. I could lick it until it all wears off.”

“Trust your oppa.”

“Why is it that when other assholes provoke me, I want to beat them to death, but when you provoke me, I don’t even get angry. I just think you’re so fucking cute, huh?”

That’s how he tamed her.

He was always acting like he would throw himself in front of a bullet for her, always calling her pretty, making her speechless, and flirting with her as if that was how he could survive.

Then, he changed his attitude as if that was all a lie, and it was like she was looking at him for the first time… How can a person change like that at the flip of a hat?

The answer was obvious.

‘Because he doesn’t mean it.’

A hollow feeling emerged in Won’s chest.

‘I knew that he treated me like a toy.’

She didn’t. If she had eyes, she would see that he was noncommittal with her.

He is a frivolous, primal, raw thug.

She must have been a novelty to him after all the time he spent in the ward. She was a newcomer in a place with only familiar faces, so he pinched, scratched, and played with her.

She must have recognized it, but somewhere along the way she forgot. Maybe she has been brainwashed. She thought he must really have feelings for her, subconsciously, because there was no one better. He couldn’t reject her.

Why was she under such an absurd illusion?

She lightly bit her lip. She felt an indescribable sense of betrayal, but on the other hand, she was grateful that she was now aware of the truth. It would have been even more devastating if it had been a decisive moment.

“Okay. I don’t need to know that.”

Won coldly nodded. It didn’t matter if the person Top Dog was looking for was named Seo Hee-Hyun or whoever. She turned to Black Cat.

“Looks like we have a good reason to cooperate, then. Let’s head to the document storage warehouse on the third floor.”

She turned on her heels and Black Cat followed.

“The filing cabinets? The room with the ’employees only’ sign has filing cabinets?”

“Yeah. I went in there with this guy during the power outage and checked it out. There might be some blueprints for the hospital there.”

“Ah, well, if that’s the case, then…”

Black Cat looked like he finally had a piece of the puzzle.

“But the door was always locked. How did you get in?”

“Well, I can’t explain it, so I’ll show you.”

Arriving at the document storage warehouse on the third floor, Won tied up her messy hair and touched the doorknob. With a click, the door opened.

“How did you open it?”

“Let’s call it a trade secret.”

After giving a flirtatious look to Black Cat, Won found the light switch and flicked it. The dark room was illuminated.

The ward’s CCTVs aren’t working because the hospital voluntarily turned them off. Naturally, the power switch works fine.

In an open space like the corridor, the lights could be seen from a distance. In here, the door was closed and isolated, so the chances of being seen were relatively low.

Of course, there is no guarantee that it was 100% safe. No matter how tight the door was shut, some light would still leak through, but she had no choice. If she had more time, she would come up with a safer method, but there isn’t much time left.

The second night she hears the snake sounds is her deadline. That means she needs to find the blueprints today. After today, she only has one more chance.

“I’ll look here. You take that, and you look over there.”

After dividing up the space, Won went straight to work searching for the documents. With an ample light source, the pace of work was faster than during the blackout.

After passing all the parts with letters and flipping through the filing cabinet in a trance, she heard the sound of an urgent breath over the sound of flipping papers. She looked in Black Cat’s direction.

“I think I found it. The blueprints.”

Won snapped the papers back into place and walked right up to him. They were indeed the blueprints. There were four sheets of floor plans, from the basement to the third floor, and they were kindly labeled with the names of each room.

“Let’s take a look at them, shall we?”

Top Dog suggested, casting an overhead shadow.

Black Cat quickly divided the plans. Won was handed a floor plan of the second floor, and she mentally compared it to what she knew of the second floor.

The number of patient rooms, audio-visual rooms, library, and image therapy rooms… There was no difference between the floor plan and what was written on it. It was possible that the back room was created by taking some of the existing space. For example, a quarter of the library and image therapy room were removed to create an additional space.

The floor plan contained the dimensions of each room, so Won made the calculations in her head.

‘This is just over 15 steps away, and this way…’

She memorized the number of steps on the x and y axis for every room she had ever been in or out of in case she might need it. Her stride length is around 70 centimeters with a margin of error of 1 centimeter, which is the result of her training to use her body to measure length in the absence of a tool.

In addition, her entire body’s dimensions could be used to measure the length in a variety of ways, including the size of her feet, the distance between her thumbs and pinky fingers when fully extended, the length of her fingertips, and the height of her knees.

‘There doesn’t seem to be any gaps.’

Black Cat spoke up as Won stared at her floor plan.

“How is it? There doesn’t seem to be any hidden spaces on the first floor.”

“I don’t think there are any on the second floor, either.”

Their gazes naturally shifted to Top Dog, who was studying the third floor.

“Do you see anything strange?”

“I don’t know about strange, but what’s with all the X’s like this?”

Top Dog pointed his finger at a spot on the blueprint. A square of various X marks. Won bluntly answered.

“It’s not there, so don’t bother. It’s a passageway to the pit area.”

“Pit space? What’s that?”

“It’s just a place for the construction equipment to go through. Electrical wiring, communication cables, pipes, and stuff like that. As you can see, it doesn’t have a door, and it’s not even accessible, so it’s like we don’t have…”

Won abruptly stopped her explanation. She snatched the floor plans of every floor and lined them up in ascending order.

The pit space starts on the lowest floor and runs vertically through the building to the top floor. Therefore, the X marker from the pit space should be in the same place on every floor.

‘D.A. is the ventilation system, so it should be on the wall. EPS (Electrical Pipe Shaft) is the electrical wiring passage, A.D. is the air duct, AV (Alarm Valve) is where the fire-related valves are installed, this is the elevator markers, and this is the TPS (Telecommunication Pipe Shaft) where the electrical wiring passes through…’

After scanning the floor plan from the first to the third floor and analyzing all the spaces marked with X’s, Won found a mysterious room that seemed to have no function and was not originally connected to the other floors.

It was behind the religious room on the third floor.

Kofi