Let's Kill Her (Book #1)

(ﾒ￣▽￣)︻┳═一(32)

As I braid my hair in front of my vanity mirror, I'm shocked at how I spent I look - dried out, as Jisoo's mom calls it when you've cried so much that you don't have anything left in you. At home, I felt destroyed over a guy or a bad test, I'd go to Jisoo's house and she'd let me do my crying, and then we'd eat junk food and watch movies until we passed out on the couch. Here, with my crying done, I'm preparing to hunt down information about killers who might be trying to blot out my entire family. I'm not even sure to process that.

Sejeong knocks lightly on my bedroom door and I open it.

"I'm ready," I say, and she hands me my cloak.

I put it on and follow her into the common room, where Sehun is on the floor looking through the crack under our door.

"Is he waiting for the guard to pass?" I whisper.

"We'll barely have a second to spare. So keep up and stay silent," she whispers back.

I nod at Sejeong, letting her know that I get the gravity of the situation and won't screw up.

Sehun stands, counts seven seconds off on his fingers, and silently opens the door. We all got out and he closes it behind us without so much as a creak. And we're off - down the hall and into the stairwell. Sehun doesn't bother to listen at each floor like I did when I was alone. He must know where the guards will be.

We reach the bottom of the stairs and stop. The guards in the foyer is walking into the vine courtyard, and the instant the door closes behind him we run across the stone floor into the hallway near the teachers' lounge. We follow it all the way down to where it dead-ends at a door. The shadow cover is good here, the only sound it our breathing. However, is someone were to turn the corner there would be no place to hide.

Sejeong pulls out some kind of mutlitool that looks like a more complex version of the molded paper clips Lisa used in our last challenge. She gets on her knees to access the lock better and slips the tool into the keyhole as I stare down the hallway. Metal clinks and my heart thuds before my brain verifies that the sound is coming from us and not from a guard.

Not four seconds later, Sejeong pulls the door open. we slip through into total darkness. I put my hands up and my fingers graze the heavy curtain that covers the doorways here. This door leads outside? I hear the lock click back into place and I hold my breath.

Sehun pulls the curtain back by an inch, and in the dim moonlight I catch a silver of the outer wall that surrounds our school. Sejeong taps my wrist and we're moving again, through the curtain and along the tree-lined building. We pass two doors and stop at the third. Sejeong pulls out her lock-picking tool. I definitely don't remember any of these doors from inside floor plan. I'm not surprised that there are parts of this castle you can only access from the outside, but I do wonder how bad the punishment will be if we get caught sneaking into them.

Through the trees, I get a better look at the outer wall. It towers over our four-story hanok building. Trees line that outer perimeter and create a tall canopy, just like in our inner courtyards. I wonder how many people tried to climb their way out of here over the years. I'm sure there is some sort of trap at the top of that wall, and from that height, there's no way you wouldn't get seriously injured if you fell from it.

Sejeong stands up and opens the door an inch. She nods and we follow her through. And to my surprise, I find myself in a huge kitchen with an arched ceiling crossed with wooden beams. Shelves along the walls are filled with hundreds of jars of spices and stacked plates. Pots of every size hang from iron hooks, while rolling pins and serving platters are left out on a long table to be used for tomorrow's cooking. The kitchen has always been my favorite room in every house, and this one looks like it was plucked from a fairy tale.