Chapter Six

Flora and Chloe both got teleported into a new place once again. The place seemed to be the inside of the castle, yet, it looked much smaller than expected. It looked more like a motel from the inside, but slightly bigger. The place had a small bar section with different kinds of alcohol drinks placed on a single long shelf. There were also a couple of dinning tables with 4 chairs tucked on each table, that were all made of dark brown wood. The floor seemed to be made of wood as well, but it was more greenish coloured instead.

There was also one sofa that looked quite old and looked like it hasn't been cleaned for some time. There were some doors around this place, which all seemed to be locked or just shut closed. "This game doesn't seem as scary as the other one was, don't you agree?" Chloe spoke with a smile as she glanced at Flora beside her, who seemed to be focused on her surrounding too.

Flora nodded to Chloe, in a sign of agreement. The place indeed looked less scarier than the other game was, but it was suspiciously silent in here. There were no game instructions, nor any characters of this game. Just a place with no people around.

Suddenly, Flora heard a familiar voice, "Hi Flora, you seemed worried, but don't worry, I'll help you through the game"

The voice appeared to be Seonghwa's, but Flora didn't see him anywhere. She looked around, and Chloe was the only person she saw. "Am I hearing things?" Flora mumbled as she felt a little lost.

"You're not, for this game I'm only allowed to be invisible, but if you wish for me to be visible then let me know and I'll try to find a way to do so" Seonghwa stated.

Flora denied his offer and answered quietly, "It's okay, no need to"

Chloe glanced at Flora with a questionable look. "Did you say something?" She asked.

Flora denied again but to Chloe this time. "Nothing, Seonghwa is just around, he said he'd help with completing this game" Flora said.

"Oh! Maybe that's why there's no game instructions...because Seonghwa will guide us" Chloe exclaimed then smiled.

Flora heard more voices from Seonghwa, who seemed to begin to explain the basics of this game. "Alright, so the point of this game is quite similar with the one we played previously, but simpler as you will only have to get yourselves out of here. To escape and win this game, all you need to do is to find the neon white door, similar to the one you went though another game. By doing that, you'll need to find clues, which I will help you through this as well," Seonghwa explained steadily, with the same sweet but deep voice of his.

Flora nodded, then looked at Chloe before she explained what Seonghwa told her to do. She explained nearly everything what he said, but in a bit shorter way so Chloe would get a quick idea about what they need to do in here.

"So we technically need to escape this place, got it" Chloe spoke before she began to look around. There appeared to be a way to a small corridor with stairs going up, so the first thing Chloe decided to do was to go through that way. Flora followed behind her friend as she looked around as well, to find more clues ahead of them.

Seonghwa wasn't active in talking, but gave hints to whichever objects were hiding that were used for unlocking some rooms or to get more ideas about where the exit could be.

The exploration went calmly, and the girls didn't expect for any consequences to appear. The place did look too quiet, which gave a little chills to the girls, especially to Flora. However, together with Chloe, she wasn't too scared to be in this place.

This place appeared to have a lot of doors. Chloe and Flora have found 7 doors upstairs and 5 doors downstairs, but none of them appeared to be an exit. Some of them rooms were empty, and some only had objects to collect, including keys.

Seonghwa didn't know exactly where the exit door was, but knew exactly where keys and other stuff were located. Flora felt odd about Seonghwa, because he seemed to know a lot about the surrounding of this game. She had no idea about how Seonghwa got all of this information about the place or where he got this information from. Due to her curiosity, she decided to mumble out a question to him, "Seonghwa, how come you know a lot about this game, but didn't know anything about the previous maze game?"

Seonghwa stayed quiet for a few moments, then proceeded to answer her question, "To be honest, I am not sure, when I died I suddenly gained some knowledge about some other games from the list. It's like it magically appeared in my head. However, I only know hints and clues for the games." He answered, but then added more thing to say in a few seconds, "I think it's a part of my job as your supporter"

Flora nodded and seemed to understand his explanation. She felt quite glad to have him around, not only because he provided a lot of help with going through this game, but just simply having him around was something that made her really happy. She still remembered every single part of the moment that happened back in the other game, when his weak body dropped on her arms, her feelings that were crashed and hurt due to that, without having an idea that he'd come back as her backup. It felt like a nightmare for her, a nightmare that ran through her head whenever she thought about it.

Suddenly, Chloe interrupted Flora's thoughts. "Hey Flora, look what I found" she said as she stood 7 feet away from Flora, beside some room that was locked with a long, rusty, and white gate. In the middle of the room, there was a thin but tall light woodened table, with a silver painted computer on top. The room looked so small that it reminded of a janitor room. There were no other objects nor equipment, apart from this weird looking table with a pc that seemed to casually waited for the girls to have a look at its screen, but was facing away in the other direction.

"I think there might be a clue in that computer...is there a way to get in there?" Chloe said then asked a question as she glanced at her friend who already approached her.

Flora stared carefully at the gate, before Seonghwa spoke. "This gate is actually unlocked, you just have to push it open a little bit harder" He explained.

Flora glances at Chloe and told her what Seonghwa said. Chloe raised 1 eyebrow, then proceeded to attempt to push the gate with more force.

Chloe pushed the gate once, then twice, then thrice, but the gate didn't budge. Then Flora decided to join to open the gate together with Chloe, and pushed the gate with full force. After a few tried, the gate has finally opened.

As the gate opened, it hit harshly onto the wall that seemed to be made of rocks. The hit made echoes inside of this room, which startled the girls a little bit. Chloe stepped in first and went for the computer that was still being untouched, or at least that was what the girls thought. Chloe approached the computer, and spotted that it was turned on. There was something on the screen, like a bar that required a specific password to continue using the pc. "I think we need a password to get access to it" Chloe murmured quietly, but Flora heard her perfectly.

Flora walked up to Chloe, then glanced at the computer. None of them knew the right password for it, so Flora decided to ask for Seonghwa's help...but strangely she didn't hear his voice in return.

"Seonghwa, are you here?" She called out to him, but still received no response.

"Seonghwa?!" She yelled out his name this time, however the silence from him remained the same.

"Maybe he's not around? Let's wait" Chloe suggested, but Flora didn't seem to agree to her friend.

"Nonsense" She said, "Seonghwa supposed to be my supporter, and stay by my side through every moment in this game. That's what he told me, and the game itself."

"Maybe he can't help us with this task?" Chloe asked, tried to calm her friend down, who seemed to be a little worried.

"No, if he didn't know the answer he could've told me" Flora argued.

Chloe didn't know what else to say, and the room covered into silence for a few seconds, before Flora decided to call out Seonghwa's name again.

She repeated his name over and over, four times, five times, ten times...but still didn't receive his response back.

Flora started to worry, and thought more about him than the game she was on. She thought maybe something happened to him. She thought of every incident that could possible come to him. Whether there was a glitch? Or whether he got lost? Or whether he somehow got disconnected for the sake of this game's story. "Maybe he was being taken away for the sake of this game?" She heard Chloe's voice, which made Flora to get interrupted from her thoughts.

"Y'know, since he's your supporter and helped you a lot with going through this game" Chloe continued, "now maybe we have to sort out the problem on our own, without his help?"

Flora thought for a moment about what her friend has just told her. Flora eventually agreed with Chloe's statement this time, because she thought it made sense, and possibly Seonghwa was been removed just for this part. This thought made Flora to feel a little less worried this time, and it led her to get rid of those negative thoughts of situations that she thought could happen to Seonghwa.

"Well, if that's the case, then we need to find the password ourselves" Flora said then leaned to the computer to type in something that she thought could've been a password. Once she hit enter, the password appeared to be incorrect.

Flora typed out more password ideas, however none of them seemed to be working.

For the sixth try, Chloe decided to attempt to put one password in the computer. However, that one appeared to be incorrect as well.

Once the girls attempted to try out multiple more passwords, the computer suddenly turned off. Chloe clicked in the space button a few times, as she hoped that computer has possibly glitched. Then looked around the pc for any possible signs of power button since the computer stayed the same.

"Did we break it?" Flora asked, unsure of what had happened to the device on front of her.

Chloe was as confused as Flora was, and both of them didn't know what to do with it.

However, soon after, the girls started to hear someone's slow footsteps. The stomps sounded steadily, and weren't too loud, but Chloe felt scared and refused exit the room in any way. Flora, on other hand, seemed to be braver this time and was prepared to find whoever was stomping nearby. As Flora was ready to find out from where the noise was coming from, Chloe suddenly grabbed Flora's wrist, prevented for her to walk any further. "Flora, I think we should stay here, I'm scared" She told Flora, with a worried look.

"What if its one of the clues for the password? I need to have a look, if you want you can stay here and wait" Flora told Chloe and then pulled her hand away from Chloe's.

"No!" Chloe strongly denied, "I won't stay here all alone, let's go together then!" She decided to go out of the room together with Flora, as she knew Flora would keep willing to leave the room, now matter how much she would've tried to convince her to stay.

Chloe wrapped her arm around Flora's, and stuck really close with her as they both slowly started to exit the room.

To be continued...