Precautions of a Snakepit - Chapter 64
The next day, Won woke up to find her body felt light. She tried to exercise a little, and it wasn’t too difficult. It was safe to say she was fully recovered.
She hummed as she marveled at her good health. Then, as she walked to the main hall, she heard a coughing sound.
“Sh*t, I never had a cold in my life.”
Hearing Top Dog’s complaint, Won turned around and walked away from the main hall.
‘He must have caught it from me.’
There’s a saying that a cold can be cured by giving it to someone else.
‘After what you did to me…’
Remembering the kiss she received from the hypnotized man, Won agreed. There was no way he wouldn’t catch a cold from licking her like a dog.
She would never be kissed like that again for the rest of her life. He sucked every last drop of saliva out of her mouth…
The warming sensations returned, and Won pressed the back of her hand to her lips. Her face heated up as she remembered the tongue tease that started out as instinctual and unrestrained but had gradually become more and more to her liking. Even in the absence of reason, he could read her easily…
‘It isn’t my fault, anyway.’
He brought it on himself. She didn’t ask him to take it, but he took it from her.
‘Who says he had to lick someone with a cold?’
She thought about it over and over again. There was no reason for her to feel guilty about it and take responsibility. She could have cursed him for being a jerk, but instead of being amused at his demise, Won felt annoyed and bothered. It was like she lost the fight.
‘It’s a good thing he doesn’t look too bad.’
Since he wasn’t completely sick, the cold must have been transferred to a weakened state. Maybe she is an idiot and he is really unharmed. There is a saying that idiots can’t catch colds.
‘Yeah, he’s an idiot, so he’ll get better soon. Let’s stop thinking about it.’
The religious cult New Faith Prayer Center brainwashes patients who participate in their programs. It’s one of the worst types of cults because of the hypnosis.
The hospital knows about it and turns a blind eye. In a ward with CCTVs everywhere, there is no way they wouldn’t be able to do it without the hospital’s permission. There is no doubt that the hospital and cult are working together. Maybe the facility is helping them with drugs to facilitate brainwashing.
‘Their link might be the snake.’
A cult that praises snakes and is hypnotized with images of snakes, and a locked ward where snake myths are rife.
Somewhere in the ward, at night, when snakes can be heard slithering around, a cult performs a ritual. The sacrifice is neither grain nor animals, but people. Patients of the hospital, to be precise. After being dragged by a snake, the patient becomes a human sacrifice.
Black Cat says he’s been admitted to the ward as a patient to track down the cult. He seems like a trustworthy collaborator. He’s clear about his purpose and has a consistent demeanor. Perhaps he wants to destroy it out of a personal grudge.
Top Dog, on the other hand, was less clear about everything. She could understand wanting to rummage through the back room to find someone, but unlike Black Cat, there was no guarantee of clear hostility toward the hospital/cult, and his demeanor was inconsistent. Sometimes it seemed like he was toying with her. For that reason, she was suspicious until yesterday…
“I told you I want to do it. I want to… but I don’t want to be hated by my pretty girl. I want to…”
Yesterday’s events made her lean toward trusting him a bit more. It was a reasonable conclusion after how he came out of the hypnosis.
Of course, she didn’t rule out the possibility that it was an elaborate act. A pretense of hypnosis, designed to gain her trust…
‘It didn’t seem like an act.’
The evidence was just in how she perceived everything. It may seem far-fetched, but it means she was willing to trust what she felt at that time.
‘Was the snake shadow I saw a lucid dream or a hallucination?’
When she was sick, she recalled seeing a shadow on the wall that looked like a giant snake.
‘I’m sure it was just a dream because I was overly conscious of snakes.’
But if it was real…
Won’s mind flashed back to something Ju-hee said one day.
“I don’t know if I can say this again, but I will: the snake is after you. Run away before it catches you.”
“Well, unnie is really pretty, so that’s why I’m telling you. Run away as fast as you can before it’s over… Once it’s over, there is no turning back.”
“As for the snake… the snake is something that has a strong interest in unnie…”
Ju-hee, pale with a fever, said some unintelligible things. It was like it was her last chance and she would never see Won again.
A chill ran down Won’s spine.
Ju-hee has another personality, Sol.
What if Ju-hee disappeared that day, and Sol had taken over her body? What if she was hiding it from Won and playing a double role?
If Won were to write a novel, she wondered who the ‘snake’ Ju-hee was talking about would be.
She said that she “knew” that the snake was after her and it had a strong interest in her.
Ju-hee and Sol share memories with each other. Ju-hee can “know” what Sol is thinking. Sol is “interested” in Won.
If the “snake” that Ju-hee was trying to tell her about was Sol, but Sol was not a normal human being, but the spirit of a snake that was parasitizing Ju-hee, and that’s why Sol’s shadow looked like a giant snake…
‘I’ve gone too far off the rails.’
She has been locked up in an asylum and isolated from the outside world for so long that she lost her sense of reality.
A snake’s soul entering a human body? With a shadow resembling the snake?
The former is unlikely, and the latter isn’t logical. No matter what’s inside, if the body is a human, the shadow must be human. It’s not like the shadow is a mirror that reflects the truth.
When reality put the brakes on because it couldn’t keep up, Won stopped writing her novel.
With reason, which she temporarily set aside, she could only conclude that the snake was either a hallucination or a dream.
It couldn’t be real. The image of Ju-hee lying in bed, feverish and in a cold sweat, could not be the last of her. A non-human being has taken over her body and pretending to be her. She is too young to be subjected to such cruelty. She has many more years to live.
She just has multiple personalities. Sol is not a supernatural entity, but a personality that branched off from her. It was a classic case of dissociative identity disorder.
When Won arrived on the second floor with a clear mind, she tried to go straight to the library. She spotted Ju-hee nearby, and she ducked for cover.
Her heart raced as if she had encountered something ominous.
‘What’s going on?’
It was Ju-hee, not a monster. Why was she acting like she saw a monster?
What if she was actually a snake in Ju-hee’s skin?
‘It can’t be. It can’t be.’
Won doesn’t understand herself. It’s contradictory to insist with her head that it isn’t, but then avoid it with her body. If she is sure she isn’t, there is no reason to avoid her.
‘Am I lying to myself?’
Won doesn’t know. In any case, she doesn’t want to run into Ju-hee.
‘Third floor. Let’s go to the third floor.’
Of all the conclusions she could come up with, she just decided to follow the latter. Avoiding the second where Ju-hee was, Won took the stairs to the third floor.
Passing by the religious room, she tried not to appear conscious of her surroundings.
It was connected to the back room. The next time there is a night when the CCTV turns off, she will break in there with the two men.
‘By the way, when we met in front of this…’
“It’s a devil’s lair, and if you go in, you’ll be cursed. You’ll die surrounded by hundreds of snakes.”
She dismissed it as simply a delusion, but in retrospect, she realized she was hinting at something. Substitute the devil for the cult and she was taught that the religious room was their lair.
Won shivered. Alzheimer’s didn’t give her much time to think straight, but Ms. Yang’s brain was still intact, and she’d be able to tell…
Swallowing hard, Won thought about the rest of her conversation.
“Have you ever been here?”
“Yes. Once with Dr. Hudson.”
“But he shouldn’t have done that, he shouldn’t have broken the ‘precautions,’ ah, ah…”
“He broke them and the demons and snakes dragged Dr. Hudson away. Alas, poor Dr. Hudson!”
‘She gave it away.’
Q. Why did Ms. Yang’s actions in entering the religious room violate the ‘precautions for the closed ward?’
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Because there is a “shrouded area” in the religious room that is mentioned in point 5 of the sign.
‘I can’t believe I didn’t understand this and had to go the long way.’
In a fit of self-pity, Won smacked her lips a few times against the back of her hand and protruded bone between her fingers, an area that is especially noticeable when she makes a fist.
Why did Ms. Yang go into the back room with Dr. Hudson?
‘Who was Dr. Hudson, the man who went into the room with Ms. Yang and was dragged away by demons and snakes? Was he the old man or a doctor at the hospital?’
Won pondered, piecing together what Ms. Yang said. She took a step back, mesmerized by a nearby figure. The old man stood in front of the religious room.
Reaching for the doorknob, Old Man Gugu opened the door without hesitation and stepped inside. Won immediately followed.
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