Joon-gi looked at the man and the man held his gaze, looking for a crack in Joon-gi’s poker face. He could not find one and seemed satisfied.
“I’m pleased to hear that, Joon-gi. I know the owners of the property were pleased with the work you carried out so I think on this occasion, given our understanding, we will not be pressing charges when the police arrive. A warning should be satisfactory, don’t you think?”
Joon-gi nodded, but he could not help the panic rising inside him at the realization that a police caution would seriously impact his ability to gain more employment on the islands if word got out.
Again, the man in front of him seemed to read his thoughts. “And as an article of faith we’d like to hold you on retainer. You can work for us, solely, going forward. We would of course pay you above your current freelance take-home. You would just need to be available as and when required. How would that sound?”
Joon-gi swallowed hard. “How long would the contract be?”
The man smiled. “How long would you like it to be, Joon-gi?”
—
THEY HAD EXPLAINED IT TO him over the next few weeks as they slowly gave him more and more access to service the house and the immaculate white rooms beneath it.
It was an experience. A sequence of rooms, escape rooms if you will, for the immensely rich.
Joon-gi himself had tried an escape room with an old college friend back in Miami. It had been fun, but it had been nothing like the rooms under that house. And at no point in Miami had Joon-gi ever felt his life hung in the balance. Why anyone would want to experience real fear was beyond Joon-gi, but then didn’t the rich thrive on the edge of things—they were like sharks, if they stopped swimming they would die. They all did it in some way, flying planes, chartering submarines, hot-air balloons, rockets even, all to prove they were still alive. It made sense, just not to him.
But it appeared, if you had enough money and were bored of life you could buy this experience. The ultimate Ironman-style physical and psychological test.
It was dangerous, they explained to Joon-gi, but nothing in there could kill anyone. All the rooms were monitored, everything would cut off before a client was in serious danger. It gave only a very realistic sense of what it might be like to almost die and then not.
Joon-gi did his job. He tried not to ask questions. The pay was good and everything was going well until the new woman arrived.
She did not look rich, not in the way the rich out here looked. She looked classy, sure, well off maybe, but not rich-rich, not generationally wealthy. More important, she did not look like the kind of person who would pay for an experience like this.
Joon-gi tried to tell himself that she was playing along with the role. They had told him each client’s experience was tailored specifically to their own requirements.
He had been required to change the sign on the house from CLIFF HILL to ANDERSSEN’S OPENING. He’d googled the name and learned that it was some obscure chess term, so he guessed the woman must love chess. But something about the way she was in the fleeting glimpses he’d seen of her gave him a strange feeling. The same feeling Maria had given him.
And that feeling has grown in strength until he cannot shift the idea that while this house might once have been an experience for rich, paying customers, it seems to be something else entirely now. The new woman did not seem to know she is taking part in an experience, but then what did he know about the kind of people who would do this kind of thing? Perhaps she is just incredibly invested in playing along with her own story, something about a dead father. Perhaps it’s helping her in some way?
Joon-gi does not know. So he does what he’s told, placing the handwritten signs where they tell him to, quietly doing his job. After all, he nearly has enough for that apartment. One more year of this and he will have enough.
It is so nearly over.
CHAPTER 35
NINA
T he second room comes into view as Nina rounds the vestibule corner and when it does, she stops dead in her tracks, what she sees chilling her to the bone.
The room is large and white with a raised platform at its center. On that platform a six-foot-long glass box is laid out. A coffin.
Burial of the Dead.
She was right: the rooms will map the parts of her father and mother’s favorite poem.
Why he did this, why anyone would do this she does not know, unless her father is still trying to tell her something. Though the thought of that seems to slip from her now that she attempts to grasp on to it, because why would he choose to tell her anything in this way? He was not like this, he was a good man, wasn’t he?
Before her, in the center of the room, lies the immaculate glass coffin, its proportions slightly exaggerated. It’s slightly wider and longer, its depth deeper, than the standard pine, mahogany, and oak coffins she was so recently shown back in England after her father’s death.
Unlike any actual coffin she has seen this one is beautiful, incredibly beautiful, a sculpture almost; beautiful and terrifying.
It glints in the room’s soft lighting, refracting twinkling beams across the ceiling as she approaches it.
There is something inside it.
