"When was this stuck on?" The middle-aged man held up the medical record, his eyes bulging — he hadn't felt a thing.
"I..." The boy was terrified of his father, shrinking behind his mother.
"I told you to speak! Now that it's your turn to talk, you go mute!" The middle-aged man yanked the boy out from behind his mother and grabbed his tiny clothes. "Where was it stuck on? When? What did the person who put it there look like?"
"On the first floor — when we were passing a hospital room, the door was half open, and I saw a hand reach out and stick this paper on your back." The boy didn't know whether he was more afraid of his father or of that hand. "I wanted to warn you right then, but then a face peeked out from behind the door. Its skin was gray, and it whispered to me that we were playing hide-and-seek, and told me not to tell you."
"He told you not to say anything, and you just obeyed?" The middle-aged man raised his hand, barely restraining himself from slapping the boy across the face. "What a worthless brat — just like your mother. Sooner or later, the two of you are going to get me killed!"
He stared at the paper in his hand, at the crooked, lopsided sentence written on it. A chill crept up his spine.
"Come find me? I'd have to be a fool to actually go looking for you!" The middle-aged man crumpled the medical record into a ball and hurled it on the ground. Whether by coincidence or not, the photo printed on the record was facing upward, aimed right at the man.
"What rotten luck." He stomped hard on the paper ball and glanced down the corridor in the other direction. "The monsters on the road didn't chase us in — they must have given up. Let's head deeper inside first. When we ran in, I remember there was another exit at the back of this building."
After hearing what the boy had said, the middle-aged man didn't dare go back the way they'd come. He stared at the hospital rooms lining both sides of the corridor, his palms slick with cold sweat.
"Aren't we going to go find that brother?" The boy tilted his head up and asked timidly.
"Find him? Are you trying to get yourself killed? Move — we're getting out of this hellhole first." The middle-aged man seized his wife by the shoulder. "Keep an eye on him. Don't let him wander. The things in this haunted building treat adults and children very differently..."
He spoke as he walked, but his pant leg was suddenly tugged by the little boy. "What now?"
"Daddy, he's playing hide-and-seek with us."
"No shit, I know that." The middle-aged man shoved the boy away. "You're not seriously planning to play hide-and-seek with a ghost in this godforsaken place?"
"But if we don't go find him, then it'll be his turn to come find us." The boy said this with absolute seriousness, and his innocent, earnest voice sent an indescribable wave of horror through the middle-aged man.
"A ghost... is going to come find us?" If they were playing by the rules of the game, then yes — that was entirely possible. The middle-aged man's face drained of color.
Whether he went looking for a ghost or a ghost came looking for him, neither was something he could bear to accept.
"No — this is a trap. Even if we find the ghost, once the roles switch, it'll come after us! Move! We're not staying here another second!"
The middle-aged man grabbed the boy, scooped him up, called to his wife, and sprinted down the emergency stairwell.
……
Wielding a pair of sharp scissors, the self-proclaimed "serial killer" known as Scissors stood alone on the first floor of the town hospital.