Chapter 117: CARE (3)

After that, Su-myeon slept for nearly half a day as though he had passed out.

It was only in the early evening that Su-myeon woke in a daze and met those guys at a café near the office.

Ha-min and his friends, who had survived the Infinite School Grounds.

“Hello, Su-myeon.”

“Good evening, sir!”

“You look really exhausted....”

Ha-min, Min-jun, and I-an were sitting side by side.

It had only been half a year since he had last seen them, but they had grown quite a bit in that time.

Seeing each of them eating from a huge bowl of shaved ice made it obvious that they were still right in the middle of growing.

Though in I-an’s case, it had not been quite so long since Su-myeon had seen him, because he had continued stopping by regularly afterward to make sure the wound on his abdomen was healing properly without any abnormal signs.

“Sit down. We’re almost done talking.”

Hwi-yeon had arrived first, and the three of them had already heard most of the explanation from her.

By the time Su-myeon arrived, the discussion was nearly finished.

When they finally heard the conclusion that Du-pal and Geon-su were believed to be father and son.

All three let out exclamations filled with a mixture of emotions.

“Whoa, whoa...!”

“That’s insane. Seriously. I never even imagined it.”

“Then does that mean Geon-su really is the age he looks...?”

The students each reacted differently to the fact that Du-pal had entered the ghost story alone for Geon-su.

Would their own fathers willingly have done the same?

Even when they tried to imagine it, they were still too young to fully grasp what that kind of feeling would be like.

They simply seemed to think it was incredible in some vague way.

“For now, these are the rules we already know about the Infinite School Grounds.”

Hwi-yeon said as she handed out the documents she had printed.

“The unusual points are that we don’t know whether Peter Pan is still in critical condition. And we also don’t know how far Wendy’s mutation has progressed or how much of it is still being maintained. Those are the two things we can’t determine.”

Those were also the only two things Su-myeon could not be certain about in terms of the aftermath.

They showed the students the rules they had organized as well and asked them to mention anything unusual that might need to be added.

But in truth, the students had already given thorough statements after escaping the ghost story, and the rules had been compiled based on those statements, so there was not much left to correct.

After reading through the contents seriously for a long while, Ha-min spoke.

“Still, I’m going this time too. Please take me with you.”

Su-myeon shook his head, saying that was ridiculous, but Ha-min spoke again in a stronger voice.

“It makes sense. Someone who’s already been there would know it better. And I did well there too!”

He was not wrong, but Su-myeon refused again.

A ghost story was not something a child could challenge simply out of competitiveness or a sense of adventure.

“No. You’re saying that because you don’t really understand. That’s not somewhere you can go with such a casual attitude.”

“How do you know I’m taking it casually?”

At Su-myeon’s words, Ha-min shot back quickly, sounding genuinely angry.

“There aren’t even that many years between you and me. I’m saying this after thinking it all through too. If you keep talking to us from the position of treating us like children, you’ll never be able to persuade Geon-su.”

At Ha-min’s words, Su-myeon clamped his mouth shut as though he had been struck speechless.

He still wanted to say no, but he could not think of any reasonable argument against it.

Hwi-yeon seemed to be in the same position, judging by the troubled expression on her face.

For this rescue to be carried out safely, even before the heart surgery.

Persuading Geon-su would have to come first.

Could they really be confident that they would succeed at something they had already failed to do once?

‘Can we really just tell him that if the surgery goes well, he can come back to reality and live a normal life?’

It was not simply a matter of heart disease.

Geon-su’s life in reality was probably difficult in many other ways as well.

Years of being shut away because of illness would have affected everything.

Naturally, he probably had not been able to attend school properly, which meant he likely had no real friends either.

“You’ll definitely need someone who can understand him and talk to him from the perspective of another student.”

And surprisingly, Ha-min’s persuasion was extremely logical.

First, he made Su-myeon understand why he himself was necessary.

“Mr. Du-pal was still a good person, wasn’t he?”

Then Ha-min explained that he was not taking this lightly.

Ha-min could not simply turn his back on someone like Du-pal, who had gone that far for his son.

On top of that, Du-pal had even disappeared quietly because he had been worried that involving the team might put them in danger.

He probably never expected them to follow him this far.

And precisely because of that.

Ha-min wanted to do everything he could.

He wanted to fulfill his own role.

“From the very beginning, we came together because we wanted to save the people precious to us, didn’t we? That’s how it started!”

It was an emotional argument to some extent, but nothing Ha-min said was wrong.

Now they had become an organization, and they had people who could assist them, so they no longer needed to rely on students.

But in the beginning, what had bound them together had been something far more personal and concrete.

Ha-min had been one of them too, yet he had been pushed aside solely because he was young.

“So this time, it’s my turn to repay what I owe. I found my friend, didn’t I? But if there’s a situation where I could help and I just sit still....”

And if someone were left permanently injured because of that, or failed to come back at all.

“I’d probably feel guilty for the rest of my life.”

What Ha-min said next was something Su-myeon could understand as well.

Sitting still and then having something happen to someone he could have saved, or someone who never needed to get hurt in the first place.

That was exactly why Su-myeon himself had started stepping forward and entering ghost stories.

Something that had begun that way had already carried them from winter through summer.

“So don’t just keep saying no. Please take me with you.”

The boy saying that had grown another year older, and in the meantime he had grown enough that no one would hesitate to call him a young man now.

They could not exclude him forever simply by calling him a child.

And then there were Min-jun and I-an as well.

They stared directly at Su-myeon as though they supported their friend’s decision more strongly than anyone.

With all of that added together, Su-myeon had no choice but to make a decision.

“......All right. Then get some sleep beforehand, and we’ll meet in front of your school at two in the morning.”

***

Meeting the three students had produced results of its own.

They drew a more specific and detailed map of the school for them.

They also added information about classrooms that had been changed or expanded since then.

Whether the school inside the ghost story had undergone those same changes was something they would have to confirm once they got there.

But naturally, it was still better to know in advance.

After returning to the office, another meeting continued based on that information.

Once again, the issue was who would enter the ghost story.

“......I should go. I absolutely have to go.”

Perhaps it could be called a silver lining in the middle of misfortune.

The Governance never lacked volunteers for field operations.

Normally, Young-cheol would have been kept in a support role whenever possible.

But this time was a little different.

“Who here can actually perform heart surgery properly? I’m the only one.”

And unlike before, when he had been their only doctor, things were different now.

Jae-hak could fill his place while he was gone.

“I’m the same as Ha-min. You found the friend who was precious to me, didn’t you? At least give me the chance to repay you.”

None of them had any intention of stopping one another.

All they wanted was to go.

So this time, they decided that a total of four people would enter: Young-cheol, Kang Han-su, Ha-min, and Su-myeon.

Su-myeon honestly wanted to cut even one more person from the group, but it was not easy.

Each of them had too clearly defined a role.

Kang Han-su for physical protection.

Ha-min to persuade Geon-su.

Young-cheol to perform the surgery.

“If anyone has to drop out, I guess it should be me.”

Unable to find any way to reduce the group while checking the roster, Su-myeon said it half as a joke and half seriously.

“I-if you want... th-then... you... you could.... You could...... d-do... do that....”

Young-cheol responded while nearly trembling, making Ju-hee snort with laughter.

There was no one here who did not know that Su-myeon, the person capable of getting them safely out of the ghost story, was the most important one of all.

“If you say something like that even as a joke, the people going into the field feel their hearts drop.”

At Ju-hee’s words, Su-myeon merely gave a bitter smile.

Still, even in the middle of the worst situation, there was some comfort in the fact that everyone had come together with similar feelings.

He still could not be certain whether they would be able to save Du-pal and Geon-su.

Even so, the Infinite School Grounds was a place where the rules had been fairly standardized within the framework of a school.

There were not that many beings whose bodies had physically mutated.

If worse came to worst, they could gather all the students together and anesthetize every last one of them....

“That probably won’t work on all of them.”

There were already several students whose appearances remained unchanged but whose sense of self had disappeared.

Lee Seung-min, whom they had brought back from The Mountain of the Red Cloak, was proof enough of that.

They had managed to bring him out somehow, but he was no longer someone capable of living sanely in the world.

If someone had gone mad to the point that they would spend the rest of their life locked in a psychiatric hospital.

If they had acquired the brain of a supernatural being with no possibility of recovery.

Then simply ending them together with the ghost story might not necessarily be the wrong choice either.

It was somewhat cruel, but Su-myeon settled his mind.

“All right. Then this time, the four of us will go. Let’s save as many as we can.”

The goal of saving as many as they could was vague, but it was the best they had.

Would Geon-su and Du-pal really decide to leave the ghost story?

And if, in the worst case, they failed to persuade them.

Would they still take action to bring the ghost story to an end?

There were still more headache-inducing questions left to resolve.

***

A space surrounded by darkness on every side.

A school trapped within stopped time, repeating the same limited span endlessly.

The Infinite School Grounds.

It was now caught in the hours of night after the sun had completely set.

Outside the windows, only a single pale white crescent moon gave off any light.

Nothing changed.

Nothing flowed.

A place where they could remain together forever.

CLICK-

CLICK-

A bizarre sound like the heels of dress shoes echoed through the corridor, following the shadows.

Wendy, twisted with her limbs bent and stretched unnaturally long, wandered aimlessly through the long hallway while dragging her membranous wings behind her.

CREEEAK-

At that moment, Wendy spotted a group of Tinker Bell guards passing by and lunged at them.

SKREEE-

SKREEEEE-!

Whether they were screams or simply some kind of noise.

No one could tell.

Wendy seized the Tinker Bells making those incomprehensible sounds and began tearing off their wings and limbs to eat them.

Not with the mouth on her face.

Her entire neck split open in half, revealing another gaping mouth that greedily swallowed the pieces.

Beneath rows of teeth sharp as saw blades, the severed pieces of the Tinker Bells’ bodies were ripped apart.

And soon, without even a trace remaining, all of them disappeared into Wendy’s stomach.

“Ahh... ah.......”

I’m... hungry....

Muttering faintly, Wendy began walking again.

She approached Peter Pan’s corpse, still lying where he had fallen with his burned body unchanged.

She started eating away at it from one side, but soon grew tired of the taste and once again began wandering endlessly through the hallway.

It was late.

All the students sat in their classrooms with their heads lowered, each studying on their own.

“A girl can’t become a mother.”

The monster wandering alone through the corridors began murmuring as though humming a song.

“Because a mother is someone who has become an adult.”

Muttering words whose meaning could not be understood, Wendy swayed her grotesquely enlarged body.

“A girl.”

The school grounds were wrapped in silence.

Wendy continued wandering there alone.

“Can’t become a mother.”