Chapter 123: Night Self-Study (5)

Ah! Seriously, please!

Seeing the stocking notification from Bell's Secret Shop for the first time in a while, Su-myeon desperately prayed.

Please let there be something useful.

But.

“...Huh?”

Just before checking his phone.

Su-myeon froze and lifted his head at the voice he had just heard.

It was a girl's voice.

At the far end of the hallway opposite them, the head of a girl with an unnaturally elongated neck came into view.

“Found... you....”

It was Wendy, peering around the corner of the hallway.

Then, following her neck, the rest of her slowly came into view, and there was something in her hand.

It was one of the Tinker Bell guards they had not seen until now.

With savage hands, she tore apart its limp limbs.

Crunch-

Then ripped off its bones, put them into her mouth, and chewed them as though crunching hard candy.

Now Su-myeon understood.

Why none of them had been around.

***

Han-su and Young-cheol were fleeing the library.

Geon-su ran ahead and called out.

“This way!”

When it came to escaping, Geon-su's familiarity with the school grounds made him the better guide.

Han-su and Young-cheol, each carrying their weapons and the black flesh, were busy enough simply keeping up with him.

Fortunately, whatever it was did not seem to be chasing them....

“What do we do?”

Young-cheol asked breathlessly, and Geon-su answered immediately.

“The broadcasting room!”

“Is it safe there?”

At Han-su's question, Geon-su hesitated for a moment before answering.

“In some ways!”

For some reason, it sounded exactly like the sort of answer Su-myeon would give, forcing a strange expression onto Han-su's face.

Perhaps people who survived for a long time inside ghost stories developed similar ways of thinking.

Then again, Geon-su had spoken about the library with much the same nuance, and something had ultimately happened there.

Either way, they had no other choice.

For the surgery, they had no choice but to find somewhere even slightly more stable.

[Broadcasting Room]

The instant Geon-su spotted the sign in the hallway, he flung the door open.

Young-cheol and Han-su practically spilled inside, and Geon-su entered last.

Bang!

The moment the door shut, the room became unbearably dark.

They could not even see their own fingertips right in front of them.

It had only been a dash from one end of the hallway to the other, since the room was on the same fourth floor.

But Young-cheol was already gasping for breath as he spoke in an almost sobbing voice.

“......We can turn on the lights, right?”

“...Yes. But.”

Geon-su hesitated.

It seemed like he had been about to say something, but then he continued.

“......Never mind.”

Click.

With the sound of the switch, Han-su turned on the broadcasting room lights.

As the room brightened, the scenery that had been hidden in the darkness finally came into view.

The recording booth inside the broadcasting room was filled with children piled on top of one another.

Literally piled up.

They seemed to be things whose lives had completely ended for one reason or another.

The remains of students whose bodies had been torn apart, lying there without the slightest reaction.

“.......”

It would have been better if there had at least been something they could use to cover them.

But there was nothing suitable, so Young-cheol quietly turned his back on them.

“......As long as you ignore them, it's fine.......”

Geon-su turned his back on them as well.

Only Han-su continued staring at them with his brows deeply furrowed.

“Have you been living like this the whole time?”

At Han-su's question, Geon-su gave a bitter little laugh.

“Yes, but. At least I'm good at running.”

Once he got out, he might not even be able to run anymore.

Young-cheol could not bring himself to contradict the self-deprecation in Geon-su's words.

Removing his diseased heart and replacing it with a heart item from inside a ghost story was something he could understand.

At the very least, it should eliminate the cause of his illness.

But would that really leave him healthy enough to run?

“.......”

“.......”

In the awkward silence, Geon-su checked the phone.

Watching him, Han-su thought.

Perhaps they had not completely persuaded Geon-su after all.

Perhaps Geon-su was simply a kind boy who could not bring himself to refuse the four people who had come all this way to find him and his father.

Young-cheol, burdened by the responsibility resting on his shoulders, began to feel uneasy.

“I'll try contacting Su-myeon again.”

They should at least let him know they had managed to escape this far.

Han-su and Young-cheol watched Geon-su manipulate the phone with somewhat heavy expressions.

***

Bzzzt-

The phone vibrated once again, but Su-myeon had no time to check it.

“This way...!”

Du-pal and Ha-min ran with all their strength behind Su-myeon as he urgently directed them.

“Ugh...!”

At the worst possible moment, Ha-min slipped in the hallway and fell hard.

“Hey! Get up!”

“Who told you to wear three-striped slippers to school?!”

Du-pal and Su-myeon grabbed Ha-min by the arms and hurriedly hauled him back to his feet.

Why the hell are you wearing slippers like that? You want to slip in the hallway and crack your skull open?

Gritting his teeth, Su-myeon bombarded Ha-min with complaints as the boy quickly got back up and resumed running.

Then again, the outfit they wore when entering the Infinite School Grounds was fixed as their school uniform.

Each of them appeared in the uniform they had worn during their own school days, right down to the shoes and socks they had usually worn.

To be fair, Su-myeon had worn slippers like those during his school days too.

But for some reason, in Su-myeon's case, the items he had been wearing when he entered remained on him in addition to the school uniform.

That seemed to be a characteristic of items.

In any case, Du-pal wore indoor shoes from an era when school dress regulations had been strict, while Su-myeon wore sneakers.

Compared to the two of them, it was unavoidable that Ha-min, a present-day student, was dressed less practically.

“.......”

As Su-myeon looked worriedly at Ha-min, who was clearly enduring the pain from his fall.

“Hide well... I can see your hair....”

Wendy muttered endlessly as she pursued them viciously from behind.

The distance between them had narrowed because of Ha-min's fall, but they soon began widening it again.

“Hide well, I can see the hem of your clothes....”

Ah! What the hell is wrong with her?!

Wendy's muttering reminded Su-myeon of hide-and-seek with Peter Pan, and it sounded as though she were whispering directly into his ear from behind, sending chills down his spine.

At the same time, Geon-su's group was still most likely on the fourth floor, so Su-myeon's group kept circling between the first and second floors.

How long had they been running?

After finally putting a little distance between themselves and Wendy, the group.

“.......”

Slipped into the men's restroom.

Wendy was still a girl, after all.

Unless they openly made suspicious noises and provoked her, she probably would not deliberately enter the men's restroom.

At the very least, the Tinker Bell guards had followed that rule, so Wendy should follow the same one.

It felt ridiculous for something from a ghost story to care about such things, but this was a ghost story set in a school.

It was strangely strict about rules like that.

Just like a fake world that had misapplied the rules and foundations of reality.

“.......”

The three of them were completely out of breath, but they covered their mouths and even suppressed the sound of their breathing.

“......Strange...?”

Wendy's voice faintly drifted in from outside the restroom.

Come to think of it, the Wendy now was somehow different from the Wendy Su-myeon had spoken to before.

Unlike the old Wendy, who had seemed mysterious and almost like a real fairy-tale character, this one simply seemed like someone who had lost her mind.

Click-

Click-

And then there was that high-heel-like sound.

Wendy's joints had twisted and stretched, strange membranes had formed, and all manner of grotesque changes had appeared on her body.

But among all of that, had there really been any organ or body part that should make a sound like that when she moved?

“.......”

Du-pal's expression did not look good either.

They waited for a long time until the sound finally disappeared, and only then did Su-myeon check his phone.

A quick scan of Bell's shop revealed, thankfully, a whole collection of items that looked useful.

He would look through them properly after they got back to Geon-su.

For now, he checked the message from Geon-su.

“Looks like they evacuated somewhere safe again. They're still on the fourth floor.”

At Su-myeon's words, Du-pal let out a sigh of relief.

They could have contacted Han-su or Young-cheol's phones as well, but the fact that the message had come directly from Geon-su was more reassuring.

“Then let's go.”

Avoiding Wendy, the group carefully got back to their feet.

Between what they had seen with Hook earlier and everything else, it was obvious that something had gone wrong with this ghost story.

Was it because the ghost story currently had no master?

Su-myeon had never encountered anything like this before, so the range of possibilities was far too broad.

“Wendy seems even stranger than the last time I saw her. Do you know anything about that?”

Su-myeon asked in a whisper, and Du-pal nodded before answering quietly.

“Yeah. Geon-su told me. Maybe it was because you guys left. Maybe it was because Peter Pan died like that. But after that, everything changed.”

Wendy began devouring anything she saw.

She chewed up and swallowed everything except the students, and as a result, most of the others either disappeared or went into hiding.

Hook had probably been attacked by Wendy as well, his body destroyed until, in the end, he had completely assimilated into the ghost story.

“All the students ended up trapped in the classrooms like that too.”

“Then why can Geon-su still walk around normally?”

Ha-min asked while listening to the two of them, and even Du-pal hesitated.

That was something neither he nor Geon-su fully understood.

“Our best guess is that entering a classroom itself is the problem.”

Geon-su had seen that once the students entered a classroom, they could no longer leave and lost their freedom.

So no matter what happened, he never entered an ordinary classroom and instead wandered outside, avoiding Wendy.

That was how he eventually met Du-pal, leading to the situation they were in now.

“This place is basically a building after its support columns have collapsed.”

When Du-pal had first arrived, even the school building itself had been strangely unstable.

Sometimes staircases disappeared, hallways abruptly ended, then reappeared again.

But now that Su-myeon and the other three had entered as well, that instability seemed to have settled down.

“Honestly, once we leave, I have no idea how long this ghost story will last. Or whether it'll eventually create another master for itself.”

As they listened to Du-pal, the group reached the broadcasting room.

They carefully opened the broadcasting room door and stepped inside....

“Gah-!”

Du-pal almost screamed reflexively at the sight inside, but Ha-min and Su-myeon covered his mouth at the exact same time.

At times like this, they worked surprisingly well together.

They hurriedly shoved Du-pal into the broadcasting room, stepped in after him, and closed the door.

By then, Du-pal had recovered from his shock and immediately went over to Geon-su.

“What happened? Are you okay? You're not hurt anywhere?”

Was every parent like that?

As though completely unaware that he himself had nearly caused trouble again just moments ago, Du-pal focused solely on Geon-su.

“...You can see I'm fine.”

But as expected, a teenage son going through puberty had no idea how to speak sweetly.

The fact that his response was so ordinary probably meant he really was fine.

“Chief, this.”

Meanwhile, Young-cheol showed Su-myeon the Shadow Flesh they had obtained.

Now all that remained was the surgery itself.

Su-myeon gestured for Young-cheol to wait and pulled out his phone again.

“Hold on. I found some other useful things too.”

[#BELL: I included the delivery fee because I set it up so everything gets sent straight to your inventory.]

Always trying to squeeze a little more money out of him somehow.

Still, it was true that she had stocked the shop with useful items, even if he had to pay extra.

[The Little Mermaid's C-Plus IV Fluid (35 Coins)]

A diluting agent for mixing two different worlds. It helps even humans from reality accept things from within a story without an immune response.

[Peter Pan's Dagger (60 Coins)]

Stab the user's 'own shadow' and carve it away from the floor, and the shadow will separate into an independent servant with three-dimensional physical force. However, do not give it freedom for too long.

[The Heavenly Rope of the Sun and Moon (100 Coins)]

The fastest and most reliable rope for ascending into the sky. No matter where you are, it will lift the user to the highest reality. However, you must never let go along the way.

[The Stepmother's Privacy Screen (20 Coins)]

Protects your privacy even inside a ghost story.

No one other than the user can peek at any text displayed on the phone. After all, you never know when you might have a secret.

Su-myeon immediately pressed the purchase button on all of them.

The Rose Coins he had earned from clearing two ghost stories were more than enough for this.

Besides, Rose Coins were also material used to make Golden Roses bloom, so there was no reason to hoard them.

Su-myeon immediately took the IV fluid he had purchased out of his inventory.

“For now, this IV fluid....”

Holy shit. Is this really right?

Inside the bright blue IV fluid, some kind of red aquatic plant was even floating around.

Was this really something you could inject into a human being?

“......It does seem like it would be useful, but... anyway.”

Su-myeon set the IV fluid down for the moment and took out the next item.

“Once the surgery starts, I'm going to light this.”

[Match of Illusion]

The area reached by the match's light becomes an absolutely safe space.

However, prolonged use may cause permanent hallucinations, so caution is required.