Reborn as a Prophet in a Horror Movie

#121Reader Mode

T/N: Thank you for the coffee Eth and Frost~ (*^▽^*)

#121

Seojun felt a sharp, electrifying thrill race down his spine, igniting every nerve. His heart pounded so loudly it felt like it might burst free. Sweat slicked his palms as he gripped his arm, desperate to quell the tremors wracking his body. The sensation was familiar. A dizzying rush that both exhilarated and terrified him. It was a feeling that could make him scream with excitement or tear the world apart just to savor its intensity. But freedom wasn’t his. Not yet.

— Oz, hey, Oz! You should check this out. I think the chalkboard moved again, but… I don’t think you noticed.

“How could I have seen it move?” Seojun’s voice came out jagged, fragile, like dry kindling about to snap.

Because the chalkboard hadn’t actually moved at all.

Without a second thought, Seojun let his sketchpad and pencils drop from his hand, his grip tightening around the gavel as he approached the front courtroom door. It looked as plain and ordinary as the back one had, yet this time, it swung open easily under his touch, as if it had never been locked to begin with.

“Huh…”

He felt the energy drain from his body as the realization sank in, leaving him hollow. It was too simple, almost laughable, how pointless his efforts seemed now.

Beyond the doorway, the scene was eerily familiar yet subtly wrong. The walls, the corridor… it was just like the back hallway that had led nowhere. But here, there was one crucial difference…

A front entrance.

Seojun stared at the entry door just steps away, unable to shake his disbelief. It was exactly as the Wizard had described—not heavy iron or steel, but a warm, reddish mahogany. The wood grain flowed in elegant, organic swirls, with delicate, vine-like carvings etched across the surface, giving it a timeless, inviting look. Near the top, a half-moon window framed in white let a soft, welcoming light spill into the room. And hanging just beneath it, in neat alignment, were three keys.

He took in the scene, eyes moving slowly, looking for anything that felt out of place. At first glance, everything seemed normal, but he knew how easily the slightest shift in the security camera’s angle could warp reality. Still, the keys, the door, they were undeniably real. This was the moment he’d imagined for so long, the door he’d dreamed of reaching. So why did a strange hesitation root him to the spot?

— What are you waiting for?

The Wizard’s voice cut through the silence, crackling with sly amusement.

— Not rushing to grab those keys? Ah, I get it. That’s what you’re into, huh? No worries, your little secret’s safe with me. I’ll just casually let it slip to, oh, your parents, your cousins, your teachers, the librarians, the guy at the supermarket, the funeral director… maybe even your secret crush.

Seojun cringed. The Wizard’s words oozed with a civility that barely concealed the threat lurking beneath. A promise to spread humiliating gossip, to exploit even the smallest vulnerability without hesitation. Clearly, he’d abandoned any hint of shame ages ago.

But, unexpectedly, the dread tingling through Seojun’s fingers began to fade, leaving behind an odd calm. Somewhere, the Wizard was watching him, observing every movement through the security feed, amused and waiting.

— Honestly? I was half-worried the code wouldn’t work. And, well, it looks like our kidnapper’s not doing so great… The air here feels stifling, like it hasn’t been aired out in years. You know that feeling when you’ve been in a stuffy place too long, and it’s like your lungs just… forget how to breathe? Could just be my imagination, but they say mind and body are more connected than we think. Mental health pulls all the strings on physical well-being, doesn’t it?

The Wizard’s rambling barely registered as Seojun snatched up the keys quickly. The keys to the storage room and the security bars on the second-floor stairwell had a solid weight that felt grounding in his hand. But the third key caught his attention: long and slender, almost like a thin metal rod. If not for the loop at one end, he might’ve doubted it was even a key.

Creepy.

He slid it into the lock on his right wrist, and with a satisfying click, the restraint loosened. No hidden traps, no sudden blasts, just a smooth release of metal. Seojun breathed out a sigh of relief.

“Haa…”

The lock, which had felt like a pair of steel handcuffs, dropped from his wrist and clattered to the floor, rolling to a stop.

Flexing his hand, he felt a wave of relief rush through his fingers. But as he savored the freedom, he could sense that the weight pressing on him was more in his mind than in his muscles. Even the heavy breath he released seemed small next to the steady throb in his injured hand. With a cautious glance at the security camera, he turned away from its watchful lens and carefully peeled back the rough burlap sack from his hand.

“Whew…”

Seojun examined his palm, caught between relief and frustration. The rusty nail had punctured the thin glove, leaving a small wound. Not deep enough to bleed much, but a dark red scab was already forming. He felt his cheek twitch involuntarily. Such a tiny nail, yet it had still managed to leave quite an impact.

He scowled at the wound, thinking that if he hadn’t kept up with his tetanus shots, he’d be just as panicked as Bobby was that time Cynthia’s guinea pig bit him. The thought made him long for the disinfectant he knew was stashed in the truck—a small pang of regret hitting him. But before he could lose himself in the memory, the Wizard’s voice cut in, half-serious but with that familiar, mocking edge.

— Oh, by the way, I’ve been wondering why the door unlocked earlier. Pretty sure it’s because the two doors are linked. One side opens, the other follows.

Seojun’s hand paused mid-motion as he worked on the lock on his left wrist. Slowly, he turned his gaze toward the security camera, feeling the irritation rise despite his best efforts to keep calm. Ignoring the steady throb in his injured palm, he tightened his grip on the gavel in his free hand, a spark of determination igniting in his eye.

Seojun stretched his arm back, wincing as his muscles protested with a dull ache. He looked almost like a quarterback readying for a throw and the movement pulled a memory from the depths of his mind: Johan at Hamon campground, axe a blur as it cleaved through Monster X’s tentacle. One clean, perfect strike. It was a sight burned into his memory, replaying every time he blinked.

Back then, the raw power of that moment had left him frozen. Now, it brought a wave of bittersweetness. Regret for all the things left unsaid, a flicker of hope for a future that would never be. He’d never get the chance to tell Johan any of it. Not now, maybe not ever.

“Hup!”

He exhaled sharply and flung the gavel. It wasn’t Johan’s throw, but it would have to be enough. A security camera was a hell of a lot easier to hit than the writhing limbs of a monster. The gavel arced through the air, connecting with a satisfying crack. Shards of plastic rained down as the camera gave way, the gavel clattering to the floor.

— Oz, what on earth are you doing? You can’t just leave a conversation hanging like that. We still have plenty to discuss…

The Wizard’s voice crackled through a nearby speaker, sounding lost without the visual feed from the hallway.

Bastard’s still playing dumb…

Without a second glance, Seojun pushed open the courtroom’s front door, leaving not just the Wizard’s voice behind, but any thought of continuing their conversation.

— Oz? Oooooz?

The Wizard’s voice echoed through the hallway, sounding utterly confused, but Seojun only scoffed. The moment he’d stepped through the front door, it all became clear: they were never truly allies.

The first spark of doubt had ignited when the back door unlocked. He had searched the courtroom, piecing together scraps of information, but that’s all he had done. Gathering, observing, tapping on the podium here and there. Nothing he did should have triggered any hidden mechanisms. Yet, somehow, the Wizard had insisted that the chalkboard had shifted the moment Seojun found the storage room key. It felt… forced, too convenient to be a coincidence.

I’m no expert in this kind of thing, but that storage room key… it was placed there with some kind of tape.

So if the door had opened, it couldn’t have been because of the key. Seojun’s jaw clenched, his teeth grinding until his gums ached. His glare settled on the shattered camera pieces strewn across the floor.

It must’ve been that bastard.

The Wizard claimed he was just an observer, confined to the CCTV control room, powerless over the events within the Corpus. But what if that, too, was a lie?

It all fit now. The Wizard’s “control room” was likely the kidnapper’s command center. A place to direct his captive victims, not simply watch them. This setup wasn’t just for observation; it was for control. Seojun’s gaze drifted back to the front door he’d just crossed. The anger simmering within him was still contained, but he could feel it building, each new realization stoking the fire inside, pushing it closer to the breaking point.

He tried to put himself in the Wizard’s shoes. If the supposed kidnapper lay unconscious beside him, and the screen before him showed someone bound and hooded with a burlap sack—an unsettling mirror image of the corpses he’d seen piled up—who wouldn’t be terrified? Even if there was a button to unlock every door in the Corpus, most people would hesitate, too unnerved by what might happen next.

But the Wizard wasn’t most people. Before Seojun even got his bearings, the Wizard had pressed the button to unlock the courtroom door without a moment’s pause.

“Ah, that son of a…”

The metallic click click of the back door unlocking had hit him with a surge of déjà vu. He’d heard that sound before. Just before he woke up in the courtroom, trapped in that blurry space between sleep and reality, his mind tangled in a fog of half-formed thoughts.

Back then, he’d been too shocked, too consumed by the panic of realizing he’d been kidnapped, to see the chance right in front of him. The Wizard had unlocked the courtroom door even before Seojun was fully awake, only to lock it again once he’d stirred.

The sharp taste of iron flooded his mouth as he bit down on his lip, the bitter salt of blood pooling on his tongue. His gaze dropped, restless and unsteady, to the floor.

The suspicion that had flickered in his mind as he left the courtroom now cemented itself into certainty: The Wizard’s actions had never come from a place of kindness. There was no grand plan, no noble reason. To the Wizard, Seojun was a tool—a pawn, a proxy that allowed him to maneuver from the safety of the control room. The Wizard had probably assumed that if he helped Seojun escape, he’d run for it and leave him to die.

Deceptive bastard.

Technically, they’d “worked together” to escape. Sure, the outcome was the same, but feelings couldn’t be severed as cleanly as slicing a radish. Even with few words exchanged, it was obvious the Wizard was deeply self-serving, not even bothering to hide it. He hadn’t mentioned the basement staircase, no doubt holding onto that little detail for his own reasons.

The basement door had the same locking mechanism as the one in the courtroom. If Seojun had brought it up, the Wizard would’ve probably feigned surprise, urging him forward with something like, “Oh? Oz, I think I felt a tremor by that door. Go take a look.” As if anyone in their right mind would stumble blindly into a basement without knowing what lay below.

“Haa…”

Seojun finally pulled the scratchy burlap sack from his head, breathing in deeply, savoring the sweet taste of unfiltered air. The Wizard’s voice still echoed in his ear, droning on with pointless chatter that Seojun barely registered anymore.

At least the Wizard had been “gracious” enough to unlock the courtroom door after getting his hands on the control room code. If he’d left Seojun behind to escape on his own, though, the gavel wouldn’t have struck the CCTV lens—it would’ve found its way straight to the Wizard’s head.

Thankfully, that vision I saw in the storage room gave me a general sense of what was happening.

Seojun murmured to himself, a wry smile tugging at his lips as he considered the so-called “greatness” of love’s power.

In any case, he was finally free. The kidnapper, the Wizard—both were people he hoped he’d never have to face again.

He reached for the front door handle, savoring the moment, only to pause when something caught his eye. Near the handle was a small, star-shaped sticker, bright and cutesy, the kind you’d expect to find on a kid’s bedroom door or plastered on a pencil case.

He stopped, staring at it, and brushed his gloved hand over the sticker. Its raised, textured surface felt oddly out of place against the smooth door. He tilted his head, a flicker of curiosity stirring.

Slowly, he peeled off his glove, revealing his bare hand. He let his fingers trace the sticker’s intricate edges, and as he did, a vision unfurled in his mind’s eye.

He saw a man struggling through the doorway, his face twisted with effort as he dragged something heavy across the threshold. Sweat-dampened blond hair clung to his forehead, and his eyes—an unsettling shade of turquoise, like a stormy sea—held a distant, almost haunted look. His chest heaved with shallow breaths, lips parted in a desperate gasp for air. A long, pointed nose lent his otherwise handsome features a subtly disquieting look.

With a final groan, the man hauled his burden inside the mansion. Seojun’s stomach lurched as he realized, with a jolt, that the “burden” was his own unconscious body. He watched helplessly as the man dropped his limp form to the floor, limbs flopping lifelessly.

The man stared down at Seojun, his jaw clenched, his expression a mask of grim determination. Across his shirt, a single word blazed in bold letters: Wizard.

It was a face Seojun had never seen before.

“…Ha!”

Seojun snapped back to the present, yanking his hand away from the doorknob with a chilling sense of finality. A faint smirk flickered on his face, though exhaustion quickly erased it. He was just too drained, his pathetic stamina wiped out by the day’s events.

He slumped, struggling to recall the last time he’d felt this worn out. Maybe when Bobby swapped the pencils in his case with dried centipedes, or when Gilbert made his grand “declaration” of love to both Florence and Xenia, or when he’d endured Fred’s endless monologue at Hamon Campground…

Each memory felt like pollution, clogging his brain with a rising tide of irritation that he forced himself to swallow. In the end, he hurled a retort into the empty air, aimed at someone who couldn’t see or hear him.

“Hey bastard, don’t live your life like that!”

He didn’t forget to raise both middle fingers high, just for good measure. With a snort, he tugged his gloves back on and pulled the front door open. A brisk breeze rushed in, cool and fresh, as he stepped outside, his strides steady and sure.

Inside, the screen that had displayed the entrance flickered and died, the shattered remnants of the monitor fading to black. The Wizard’s voice echoed through the empty space, calling out for “Oz” a few more times over the microphone, but he got no answer.

— Oz? Oz, did you leave? Ah… Ahhh. I guess I’ve been found out.

Realizing it was useless to keep calling, the Wizard’s lips drifted away from the microphone. Johan let out an awkward chuckle, the sound hollow in the silence.

T/N: Looks like the author is a fan of edging. Sigh… guess we’ll be waiting a bit longer for that long-awaited reunion. （︶^︶）