“Stoppp!” one of the people chasing me shouted at that moment.
Several people in front of him suddenly stopped just as their footsteps were about to carry them past the pitch-black corridor I had gone through earlier.
“There’s no way he ran this way. There’s a pitch-black corridor here, and even we don’t know where it leads. This corridor has been here since the time of our ancestors. We have to be careful because there are so many places here that could put us in danger.”
“We’d better go back and tell them that the person who eavesdropped on our conversation didn’t come this way.”
After hearing this, several people finally nodded. They turned around and walked back to a small room that served as the exit from the corridor.
Several others were sitting and standing in the small room, leaning against the walls. They appeared to be waiting while smoking, filling the cramped room with cigarette smoke.
“Well? Did you find him?” asked someone sitting cross-legged near the corridor’s exit. He stared sharply at the people who had been chasing me while smoking his cigarette.
“I couldn’t find him, even as far as the end of the pitch-black corridor over there. I’m sure he wouldn’t dare run into that corridor, because it’s forbidden—even to people who know about this place besides us,” he said, lowering his head slightly.
“Hmmmmmm. It looks like he ran outside. It seems he already knows about this place, and about this corridor too.”
“That means someone from one of the three great families leaked this place’s existence. Information has gotten out—information that was supposed to be known only by certain people here.”
“Or...” Suddenly, the man pointed at the two people I had been following.
“You two brought someone else here,” he said, fixing them with a sharp stare.
The two people I had followed merely shook their heads. They even said that when they entered this place, no one had followed them, so they truly had no idea who had entered this place and overheard what they were discussing.
As they looked at one another and tried to figure out who had eavesdropped on their conversation, heavy footsteps suddenly echoed through the room. A middle-aged man with a large build appeared, carrying the baton he always used when walking.
“Dung, do you know who was eavesdropping on our conversation?” the man asked as he slowly walked through the corridor leading to the iron door at the far end.
The smoker, whom the man called Dudung, suddenly changed his sharp expression into one of deep respect. He immediately rose from his cross-legged position and approached the man while shaking his head.
“Sorry, sir. It looks like my friends and I can’t find him right now,” he said, bowing his head.
“Hmmmmmmmm.” The man suddenly took a small smoking pipe from his shirt pocket. His large body seemed to have trouble retrieving it.
Dudung quickly realized that the man was about to smoke. He immediately took one of his cigarettes, opened it to expose the tobacco, and stuffed the tobacco into the end of the pipe so he could light it for him.
“Remember, Dung. What we’re doing has been done by our ancestors before us. Even if we have to do it in secret, what we’re doing can return this village to normal,” the man said as he drew on the pipe packed with glowing tobacco.
“We don’t have much time, Dung. We can’t keep letting our village be terrorized every night.”
Fuhhhhhhhhh.
“You don’t want this to drag on forever, do you?” the man asked, suddenly turning toward everyone in the small room.
They all suddenly nodded, signaling that they agreed with him.
“Now, do your best to find that person! Make him keep quiet about what we’re doing—or, if necessary, bring him in so he can learn what we’re doing here. We’re doing this for the villagers trapped in this place.”
“But remember, everything requires sacrifice, because Cihalimun Village has been doing this for hundreds of years.”
“The bountiful harvests, the positions you’ve held while working in the city, and the prosperity that kept flowing like water made Cihalimun Village wealthy when our ancestors carried this out hundreds of years ago.”
“But...”
“For some reason, everything has turned out like this now. It’s as if something is wrong with what we’ve been doing, so we have to end it as soon as possible.”
The man spoke with such authority that everyone there followed his words with the utmost respect. He talked at length, especially about what they were doing amid the terror they were experiencing in the village.
He kept telling them that they had to finish what they had discussed inside as quickly as possible, because it was the only way to get rid of the terror waiting for them when night fell.
Until—
Tring, tring, tring.
The sound of their phone alarms rang out when the time reached exactly five in the afternoon. Although their phones could no longer pick up a signal to communicate with people outside the village, they could still function at times like this.
When Dudung heard the alarm ringing from his phone, he immediately took it from his pants pocket and shut it off. Then he told the respected man in front of him that they should leave this place at once, because night would fall in an hour.
“Sir, it’s five in the afternoon. I should take you home, and the others here need to carry out their duty to tell the villagers to go inside their homes when night falls.”
“As for the person who infiltrated this place, I’ll look for him tomorrow, sir. I’m sure he’s already gone home now that we all know about him.”
“So come on, sir.”
“I’ll take you home, because if we stay here at night, I’m sure none of us will survive. None of us will ever see the morning sun again once they appear before our eyes,” he said as he walked the man home, guiding him through the long corridor that ended at an old building near the rice fields.