Chapter 120: Night Self-Study (2)

The library had a large set of doors.

A huge entrance with two doors, fitted with elegant wooden handles.

Han-su carefully opened one of them.

From inside came the heavy smell of mold, the scent of old, aged paper.

And the nauseating odor of formalin.

“.......”

Formalin.

He wondered how many people would immediately recognize what kind of smell it was.

But Su-myeon and Han-su, who were accustomed to this horrifying ghost-story world, and Young-cheol, who was a doctor, recognized it immediately.

Still, for Ha-min’s sake, they all kept the thought to themselves.

There was no need to deliberately say the word out loud.

“...There are fewer books than I expected.”

The windows were covered by thick blackout curtains, but the lights inside the library were on.

And bookshelves were tangled together like an endless maze.

However, only a few shelves near the entrance actually had books on them.

“Don’t go too deep inside. Ha-min, you stay here.”

In case someone went in and lost their sense of direction.

It would be better to have one person clearly marking where the entrance was.

That was where the frightening part of the library began.

“If anyone goes farther in than you can see, call them back.”

Leaving Ha-min with that role, Su-myeon headed toward the inner shelves.

The thousands of books lined up here had students’ name tags sewn onto them instead of titles.

The covers looked as though they had been patched over with the fabric of old school uniforms.

The possibilities that were the futures of the children preserved here. Their restricted plausibility. Perhaps fragments of causality.

All of it filled the bookshelves from end to end.

There was not a single drop of blood or scrap of flesh anywhere in sight, yet Su-myeon found this place more horrifying than anywhere else.

This place was essentially a specimen room filled with all kinds of preserved exhibits.

“.......”

Suppressing his disgust, Su-myeon scanned the names lined up before him.

Among the unfamiliar names, two familiar ones placed side by side caught his eye.

[Park Geon-su]

[Park Du-pal]

They could have been people with the same names, but considering the books were placed next to each other, it seemed highly likely they were the two people he knew.

After hesitating for a moment, Su-myeon pulled out the book bearing Du-pal’s name.

The book was strangely heavy.

When he opened it, what he found inside was a novel-like account of Du-pal’s life, beginning with his birth and continuing through various events from his childhood.

Most of the latter half consisted of stories proving that their speculation had been correct.

There was only one additional thing he learned.

***

Watching a coworker die after being crushed alive beneath heavy machinery, he had been forced to make a choice.

His sick son’s hospital bills.

His friendship with his coworker and his own humanity.

Ah, why was life nothing but an endless succession of such cruel choices?

“......It was simply an accident caused by individual negligence.”

No.

Du-pal knew that was not true.

The responsibility lay with the company that had forced them to carry out unreasonable work.

But if he wanted to afford his son’s hospital bills, he needed the company’s money.

He could not afford to be fired, no matter what.

His dead coworker was pitiful, but what else could he do?

The living had to go on living.

“How... how can a person do something like that?”

But his wife seemed deeply disappointed in him because of what had happened.

He had never meant for things to turn out this way.

“I can’t believe it.... I can’t believe you made that choice.......”

Was disappointment and despair in someone’s humanity something that could ever be repaired?

From that day onward, his wife could no longer look at Du-pal the way she had before.

She began taking off the wedding ring she had worn all her life, but that did not mean she abandoned their relationship.

Seeing the ring she now kept hanging from a necklace instead of wearing it on her finger, Du-pal thought that at least things had not reached the worst possible point.

He could understand her position to some extent.

And in another sense, he was almost relieved that she had said those things to him.

If she had defended his decision, it would have painted a truly shameless picture.

He had been the one who made the choice, yet he probably would have ended up disappointed in his wife for defending something morally wrong.

'I’m almost grateful....'

That she had at least condemned him in that way.

Because the pain it caused him felt like the price he had to pay for his immoral actions.

In a way, it also allowed him to lessen his guilt.

He could rationalize it by telling himself that he had paid enough of a price, so that was enough.

Perhaps his wife knew that and had deliberately taken on that role.

'But... how long are we supposed to live like this?'

The subtle change in atmosphere was, of course, enough for their son Geon-su to notice as well.

Perhaps because of stress, or perhaps as punishment for his own sins.

His son’s congenital illness unfortunately continued to worsen.

And then, one day.

Du-pal completely forgot that his wife and son had ever existed.

Had he really remained unmarried and single for this long?

He did feel a strange sense that something was missing, but when he thought of it as loneliness, it did not seem all that strange.

He also felt strangely relieved, as though something that had been weighing heavily on his heart had disappeared.

Why was there a space like this in his house?

There were occasional oddities like that, but he had no particular desire to interfere with them.

There had to be a reason.

Surely there was.

...(omitted)...

After leaving Alice Hotel, Du-pal realized the truth.

He had a wife and a son.

And both of them had disappeared from his arms.

***

Du-pal’s story, somehow more bitter than Su-myeon had expected, weighed heavily on his heart.

Of course, there was hardly anyone in the world without some kind of story behind them.

“......I feel like I shouldn’t have read it.”

The reason he had chosen Du-pal’s book rather than Geon-su’s was simple.

He thought it would be worse to pry into the feelings of the sensitive Geon-su and then act as though he knew everything about him.

And if he had to apologize later for reading one of their books, apologizing to Du-pal seemed easier.

That was why he had made the choice.

But now that he had unintentionally learned about Du-pal’s deeply personal past, he felt strangely unsettled.

Meanwhile, Han-su was standing at a bookshelf on the opposite side from Su-myeon.

“.......”

[Han Su-myeon]

And Han-su was reading the book bearing Su-myeon’s name.

Su-myeon’s expression twisted awkwardly.

He had read Du-pal’s story without permission too, so he supposed he should consider this a case of putting himself in the other person’s shoes.

Still.

When he thought that there probably was not much of a story in his own book, that somehow made it even more embarrassing.

He had simply lived an ordinary, uneventful life.

Compared to most people, there was probably nothing in it that would particularly hurt him if someone else saw it.

“......What is it?”

But Han-su’s expression was strange.

It was not merely that he felt guilty for reading Su-myeon’s story without permission.

Something was wrong.

His gaze was serious, as though he had discovered some kind of mistake.

“What is it?”

When Su-myeon asked again, Han-su hesitated before turning the book around and showing it to him.

“.......”

The page Han-su showed him.

It was blank.

So was the next page.

And the page after that.

Startled, Su-myeon took the book bearing his own name and flipped all the way back to the beginning.

Compared to Du-pal’s book, it was strangely light, and only a few pages at the front had anything written on them.

He was much younger than Du-pal, so it made sense that only the earlier pages would be filled.

Except....

This was far too early.

In modern society, countless people spend their lives striving for wealth and trying to achieve goals of their own.

And yet most ultimately collide with the limits imposed upon them and have no choice but to live ordinary lives.

Twenty-seven-year-old Han Su-myeon was an extremely timid and ordinary young man.

Su-myeon was very satisfied with the fact that he possessed a talent for being content with an ordinary life.

That was how he evaluated himself, and in any case, he liked living that way.

“.......”

But on this particular day, he opened his eyes amid an eerie atmosphere that was anything but ordinary.

Looking around, he saw a small square room covered in unfamiliar yellowed wallpaper.

“......What is this?”

Startled, Su-myeon flipped farther toward the beginning.

But there was nothing before it except the green endpaper protecting the first page of the book.

He turned the page again, but the sentence he had just read really was the very first line.

His story began at a point in time that made no sense.

Su-myeon immediately opened another book beside it, one bearing an unfamiliar name.

[Min-seok had no choice but to be born beneath his father’s indifference.]

[Ha-eun’s birth took place amid the blessings of her entire family.]

[Ga-ram’s birth was fraught with hardship and adversity from the very beginning.]

No matter how many books he opened, they were the same.

Compared to his own, most other people’s books began with their births.

What their parents felt upon seeing them as newborns.

What circumstances had led to that person being born.

Who had exerted a major influence on their birth.

They all contained stories surrounding the person’s birth.

But Su-myeon’s was different.

As though he had only been born at that very moment.

His story began when he entered Alice Hotel.

“Hey, Mr. Young-cheol. Don’t go too far in.”

Ha-min’s voice snapped Su-myeon out of his confusion.

Young-cheol, who had been peering around the shelves farther inside, returned toward the entrance.

“Looks like Agent Park and Geon-su aren’t farther inside either.”

In any case, Du-pal and Geon-su were not here.

Listening to Young-cheol’s words, Su-myeon let out a long sigh.

It was a little strange, but he did not have the luxury of dwelling on it right now.

So what if some bizarre bookshelf inside a ghost story had his life story cut off?

If anything, perhaps the normal reaction would be to consider that preferable to having it know his entire life.

“He still isn’t replying either.... This is driving me crazy. Seriously. What do we do now?”

Ha-min said after checking his Heartphone once again.

Su-myeon felt as though his head were starting to throb, but with another sigh, he took off his glasses and wiped them again.

It felt as though nothing was getting resolved while complications just kept piling up.

Han-su looked at Su-myeon with concern, but Su-myeon forced himself to wave him off as though he were fine.

“That aside, don’t we need to find at least ✧ NоvеIight ✧ (Original source) one shadow teacher?”

Young-cheol said while anxiously looking around them.

For the surgery, they needed to obtain some extra Shadow Flesh just in case.

Young-cheol had carefully brought along the Shadow Sewing Kit they had used before and taken back to reality, so that was the only additional thing they still needed.

Which meant it would be ideal if they could deal with a passing shadow and obtain some more flesh....

“You don’t think they all disappeared, do you?”

At Ha-min’s uneasy question, Su-myeon shook his head.

A ghost story did not kill the beings that belonged to it on its own.

It might leave them on the verge of death, but it would not have erased them completely.

“If we really can’t find one, let’s go check the old infirmary.”

If the shadow they had cut flesh from back then had not rotted away and disappeared in the meantime.

It should still be there.

“Then let’s get out of here for now.”

It does not look like they are here.

Once Han-su summed up the situation, everyone agreed and left the library.

As the group wondered whether they should head to the infirmary next.

“...!”

They suddenly locked eyes with Geon-su, who was coming up the stairs.

Right!

This damn school might be big, but it was still just a school!

It had been strange that they had not run into him even once until now.

“You...!”

Just as Su-myeon, thinking this was perfect timing, was about to call out to him.

An unfamiliar man standing behind Geon-su suddenly grabbed him and yanked him back.

He looked around eighteen, roughly the same age as Ha-min.

But if there was one thing that stood out about him, it was how unbelievably handsome he was.

With broad, solid shoulders and looks good enough to make anyone wonder whether he was a model or an actor, he was an unfamiliar male student.

“Uh...?!”

While everyone stood there stunned by the sudden turn of events.

Ha-min’s bewildered voice slipped out.

Geon-su and the mysterious man immediately began running back down the stairs, fleeing from them.

They had assumed Geon-su would be with Du-pal, so who the hell was that man?

“Just chase them!”

They needed to catch Geon-su first if they wanted to persuade him or ask him about Du-pal.

The group immediately took off after Geon-su and the mysterious man.

With Han-su bounding down the stairs two or three steps at a time, Geon-su was unable to put much distance between them.

But—

“......Damn it.”

Of all places.

Wendy was standing in the second-floor hallway they had rushed down into.

Han-su slammed to a stop behind Su-myeon, and the rest of them barely managed to stop as well, one after another bumping their foreheads into the backs of the people in front of them.

Then Geon-su, who had been fleeing toward the first floor, gritted his teeth and suddenly grabbed Su-myeon by the collar and yanked him along.

“Shh.”

As though magnetically attached to Su-myeon while he was being dragged away, the rest of the group hurried after them and hid beneath the staircase on the lower floor.