It was known that there were two factions in the restaurant: the Conspiracy Faction and the Reckless Faction. The Conspiracy Faction's calling card was the ever-present elevator chime. It was like a secret signal for them—wherever the elevator chime rang, they were sure to be present.
The restaurant's head chef and waiters were not on the same side at all. Since the waitstaff were summoned by the elevator chime, that meant the restaurant itself belonged to the Conspiracy Faction, while the nerves overhead and the head chef might be part of the opposing Reckless Faction.
Jerome's twin brother, who sat before him now, claimed that he had not died during all these days of loops. Instead, he told Schiller that there might be someone in the kitchen who could communicate—a person who owned these nerves. In other words, someone from the Reckless Faction.
If Schiller was right, that person might provide him with intelligence. Yet it all sounded like the conspiracy on the nineteenth floor: the same overwhelming chorus of voices, the same trap concealed in the place of greatest despair, forcing people to believe and rely on it.
If an ordinary person were sitting here now, even if they had somehow survived in this hellish restaurant, they would know that leaving it now was suicide. They had felt it during the elevator ride down: the entire hotel was now crawling with monsters. Leaving the restaurant could easily get them killed somewhere else.
Hearing that there was a rational person in the kitchen who could be communicated with would inevitably tempt them. Jerome's twin brother might not have lied; he simply had not told the whole truth, and most people would have no way of telling the difference.
Schiller could also be sure that everything he had said so far