I Revived My Maid, Now She Hungers for My Blood

How Rat died, he did not know.

It wasn’t just Raccoon who was in the dark—none of the others among The Seven knew either. Rat’s disappearance had been far too abrupt. Not even the faintest trace of struggle had been left behind, as if Rat had simply never existed to begin with.

Raccoon even thought, for a time, that Rat might not be dead at all. Perhaps he had merely vanished for a while—just like Sparrow, who rarely interacted with the rest of them. Sparrow always kept to himself, his whereabouts unpredictable.

It wasn’t unusual for him to disappear for ten days, even half a month.

Disappearance did not necessarily mean death.

But—

Inside the stairwell.

A man, about 5’7” (five-foot-seven), dressed in a hotel staff uniform, sprinted through the dimly lit stairway. His footsteps were frantic and erratic.

Leather shoes pounded against the concrete steps, producing loud, sharp echoes that ricocheted through the empty space.

Descending from the twenty-second floor—most people would never choose the stairs, let alone a hotel employee worn ragged by work.

The elevator was right there. One press of a button, three minutes, and you were at the ground floor.

But he was different.

What he sought was not simply to leave. It was to survive.

The elevator was too obvious. Too dangerous. That unknown terror in the banquet hall—it would surely guess he might take the elevator down. The moment those doors opened, who knew what would be waiting outside?

No. He absolutely could not do that.

He was Raccoon, one of The Seven.

He was not as strong as Bear, not as cautious as Rat. He didn’t even have Crocodile’s hardened shell. He considered himself somewhat... worthless.

His presence almost felt like an insult to the name “The Seven.” Timid and cowardly, even more so than Rat.

But perhaps it was precisely because of this that, in Rat’s absence, he had become the most perceptive among them. His cowardice was an instinct carved deep into his bones. And because of that, his sensitivity to danger was not far inferior to Rat’s.

From the very moment Butterfly had vanished, he had sensed something was wrong.

It was a feeling impossible to articulate—like a faint, nearly imperceptible scent of rust bleeding into the air, or an invisible gaze drilling into his back. So subtle it could almost be ignored.

But his instincts told him: something was off.

When Serpent reappeared in the ballroom, he had taken the initiative to approach her, exchanging a few words. It was through those brief exchanges that he confirmed his deepest fear.

Serpent’s responses were far too smooth.

She was like an actor who had memorized every line—every expression, every pause perfectly placed, yet lacking Serpent’s own characteristic sharpness and arrogance. Certain physical mannerisms were wrong too.

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Serpent’s fingers habitually rubbed her left ring finger, a muscle memory from the person whose skin she wore, someone who had worn a ring for years.

But now, that gesture was gone.

All these signs made Raccoon realize in an instant:

Serpent was already dead.

She was dead, and he had been conversing with her skin.

The moment he understood that he had been speaking only to the borrowed skin Serpent had always used, the horror he felt was no less than what a human would feel upon discovering that a close friend had been replaced by something inhuman.

That uncanny dissonance—it didn’t make the imitation seem more human. It only amplified the terror. Every tiny deviation served as a constant, grating reminder...

The thing before you is not the person you knew.

It is a layer of skin. Skin stretched over something unknown.

Raccoon—already the most cowardly among them—was utterly terrified. He didn’t even know who had killed his companions. He only knew that something had slipped into Serpent’s skin, and was now mingling openly with the other guests in the ballroom.

Just as they had all done before: using human skin to masquerade as humans.

Only this time, it was not humanity being imitated. It was them.

And then—that faint, nearly imperceptible tremor.

It was so light that an ordinary person would never have noticed. But this was no mere structural vibration. It could only have been Bear. Only Bear’s strength could produce an impact of that magnitude.

Which meant: Butterfly, Serpent, Bear—all dead. Of The Seven who had come to the banquet tonight, only he and Crocodile remained.

But he had no time to warn Crocodile. If he didn’t flee now, he likely wouldn’t survive either.

……

The stairwell lights were dim, flashing past overhead one after another. With every floor he descended, his pace quickened.

In moments like this, he truly wished Rat were still alive. If Rat were here, he would have sensed this disaster far earlier than anyone else. Butterfly might not have died. Serpent might not have died...

But Rat was gone.

This time, he no longer doubted it. Disappearance meant death. Creatures like them, wearing borrowed human skin—there was no such thing as a temporary absence. Once gone, they were dead.

And he did not want to vanish without a sound. He did not want to end up like Serpent—reduced to a skin worn by someone else.

He only wanted—

To live.

Clack, clack, clack...

Footsteps echoed dense and frantic through the dim stairwell. The sound layered upon itself in the enclosed space, like a drumbeat growing faster and faster, more and more urgent.

The corridor lights flickered, stretching and distorting his shadow as he ran. The shadows shifted with his movements, like some living thing in pursuit.

He had no idea how long he’d been running, floor after floor. He’d long stopped counting. In his daze, he felt as though he had entered an infinite, looping corridor.

The same turns. The same signs. The same gray concrete walls. No end in sight. Every corner he rounded revealed the exact same scene, as if he were trapped in some sinister, repeating cycle.

Sweat soaked through his shirt. The damp fabric clung cold and sticky to his back.

His throat burned as though seared by flame, each breath a sharp, scorching pain. His legs had gone nearly numb, moving purely by mechanical instinct.

Just as he was on the verge of despair—

The scene before him suddenly shifted.

Light appeared.

Not the sickly, pallid kind, but the bright, warm glow of a lobby. It spilled through the glass doors at the end of the corridor, spreading across the floor like a guiding path toward survival.

He had made it!

He had actually made it down from the top floor, arriving at the ground-level lobby of this upscale office building.

The main entrance was just ahead. The wide revolving door turned slowly, its glass panels refracting soft light. Beyond it lay the freedom of the night.

The city’s lights were faintly visible—streetlamps, headlights, neon signs. Ordinary, safe lights belonging to the human world.

And yet, he dared not approach.

He crouched at the corner of the corridor, back pressed against the wall, warily observing the people moving through the lobby. At this hour, the ground floor was still fairly busy.

A receptionist at the front desk was checking in a late-arriving guest. Two men in suits stood near the lobby sofas, speaking in hushed tones. A security guard paced back and forth by the door.

Every single one of them looked perfectly ordinary. Utterly normal.

But who could guarantee that?

Any one of them might be the unknown horror lurking within this building. Who knew if it had already reached the lobby, wearing some borrowed skin, blending into the crowd, smiling as it waited for him to walk right into its trap?