Chapter 124: Night Self-Study (6)

Morning at the Governance office.

In fact, dawn and early morning there were livelier than midday.

The people who had stayed up all night worrying about and waiting for those who had gone into the field grew more exhausted as the hours passed.

“What is this? Dost none of thee sleep?”

Ryang came up to the office and spoke after seeing the agents still gulping down coffee in the same subdued atmosphere.

It was easy enough to understand how they had ended up with a dokkaebi making coffee here.

“Ah, you're awake?”

“We still have some buckwheat jelly left from yesterday. Would you like some?”

“Do you happen to know when Su-myeon and the others will be back?”

Ji-hoon, Ju-hee, and Hwi-yeon each said something to Ryang in turn.

Ryang stood there blankly for a moment, then answered them one by one.

“Aye, bring it forth. They will likely emerge in about two hours.”

Everyone had been about to simply nod and let the words pass when the last part suddenly caught their attention.

Two hours? Wasn't that strangely specific?

Ryang tilted her head and added,

“Unless they die, I believe they shall emerge after two hours or so. And by my reckoning, [N O V E L I G H T] the school will need to be shut down. Hast thou prepared for that?”

It had been a question they had tossed out without really expecting an answer.

But when they received a far more specific response than anticipated, they snapped awake.

Ji-hoon shot to his feet with both hands on his desk, while Ju-hee and Hwi-yeon exchanged glances.

The three of them moved almost like one body, quickly setting out food for Ryang before grabbing her attention again.

“Please explain in more detail.”

“How sure are you? What percentage?”

Faced with the sudden flood of attention, Ryang cleared her throat for no real reason.

Perhaps secretly pleased by all the attention, she continued with a smug expression.

“Ahem, well. 'Tis not as though I know everything....”

Ryang had accumulated a fair amount of data on Su-myeon in her own way.

The information Su-myeon knew, the peculiarities of the ghost story that might have changed, and Su-myeon's patterns of behavior and thought.

She could not calculate anything with absolute certainty, but she could estimate within a broad range.

After all, she had chosen to speak to Su-myeon through a system modeled after AI in the first place.

Ryang was a dokkaebi who liked questions and answers.

Naturally, questions required answers, and if those answers proved useful, even more questions followed.

Following that obvious principle, Ryang supplied them with another useful answer.

“If 'tis that fellow, he will surely return having saved most of the students within.”

So they would need to prepare accordingly.

At Ryang's words, the agents immediately became busy again.

If it really meant most of the students inside the Infinite School Grounds, that was a group numbering in the hundreds.

If that many people suddenly returned to reality....

“Good morn—...... You don't look good? Wh-what is it? What should I do first?”

Only Mi-ae, who had gone home alone and therefore arrived later at her normal working hour, joined them belatedly with a bewildered expression.

***

Inside the ghost story, the surgery had already been underway for quite some time.

The Match of Illusion had been placed neatly inside a dish near the entrance.

There was no reason to personally hold it and endure the penalty.

If they aimed its light at the entrance where the door connecting the outside to the broadcasting room stood, turning the doorway itself into a safe zone, then this sealed room should not be exposed to immediate danger.

“At the very least, if they can't cross the door, we should be fine, right?”

Once the surgery began, they would not be able to run anyway.

Even if the doorway became blocked, that would not matter.

They had another method for breaking through it.

Before long, the broadcasting room was filled with the smell of all kinds of disinfectants.

Granted, Park I-an had been perfectly fine despite undergoing a procedure without any proper sterilization, but that kid had originally been a healthy baseball player.

There was no way to know how Geon-su would fare, so it was only right to take every precaution they could.

Young-cheol did his best to follow proper procedure, even if only in a simplified form.

Han-su assisted with the surgery.

There was no helping it. He was the only one who could stomach watching someone's chest being opened and their heart replaced.

“Then let's think about how we're getting out.”

Once the surgery had safely begun.

Su-myeon took Du-pal and Ha-min aside and started discussing their escape.

“First, the easiest way is this.”

Su-myeon set down the key Du-pal had returned to him.

If only the people here needed to get out quickly, they could simply open the way and leave.

But neither Du-pal nor Ha-min answered immediately. They stopped to think.

The reason was obvious.

“......As expected, neither of you feels right about just leaving everyone behind, do you?”

Du-pal answered first.

“For now, we need to get the doctor and Geon-su out first.”

It seemed Du-pal wanted to make sure those two were safely outside, then discuss rescuing the other students afterward.

At the very least, if there was a way to save them, he appeared willing to consider it and talk it through.

In the end, once again, the rescue operation began taking on greater importance.

As the discussion headed in that direction, Su-myeon sighed.

Come to think of it, what kind of place had Alice Hotel even been, for every single companion he had met and gathered there to be this incapable of minding their own business?

'Ah, right. The ones who weren't like that never made it out.'

But once he changed the premise, it actually made sense.

In the first place, selfish people who only did whatever they wanted had never managed to leave that place.

Looking at it that way, perhaps this situation was only natural.

“Um... couldn't we knock Wendy unconscious too? If we jab her with, like, five anesthetic syringes, wouldn't she pass out?”

Even dokkaebi could be knocked unconscious by anesthetic inside ghost stories, so would Wendy really be immune?

Ha-min's suggestion was disorganized, but it was not unreasonable.

If they could somehow inject her properly, it might not be impossible.

“...Maybe I should've brought an anesthetic gun.”

Should I add that item to the list from now on?

While Su-myeon was thinking that, Du-pal asked him a question.

It was nothing new, but seeing the younger and handsome Du-pal still felt strange every time.

“Do you have enough anesthetic to use it on all the students too?”

“...I don't know. I think we could try using a decent amount, but would that even matter?”

He was not even sure whether any of them were properly conscious right now.

It would be easiest if they simply followed on their own.

But were they really supposed to anesthetize every single one of the hundreds of students from the first through fourth floors, then carry them all out one by one?

That process alone felt impossibly daunting, but that was not the only issue.

“Even after that, there's still a problem....”

All the students sat at their desks with their heads lowered, perfectly still as though studying, and there was no guarantee they would be all right even after being rescued.

They did not move at all, so Su-myeon could not even tell whether they were alive, or whether they were capable of thinking properly.

Since they knew nothing, it was impossible to select only certain people to take with them.

Even if they went through hell and managed to rescue every single one.

If all of them ended up mentally unable to recover, like Lee Seung-min after being rescued from The Mountain of the Red Cloak, would rescuing them even have meaning?

As Su-myeon thought, something suddenly clicked.

'Right. This is... a school.'

The symbolism inherent in the most fundamental setting of a ghost story always carried enormous significance.

Even when a ghost story possessed a gimmick that could ultimately destroy it, it preserved its fundamental nature until the very end.

Then what was something absolute in a school, a world belonging to children?

Probably teachers.

And there was one authority that took precedence even over teachers.

“Manager Park, you still have that, don't you?”

Su-myeon pointed at Du-pal's name tag.

Not the name tag he was wearing now, the one that said Park Du-pal. Another name tag. Didn't he still have it?

“What? A name tag? What are you....”

Du-pal looked confused, then soon seemed to remember something and searched through his inventory.

Back when they had entered Alice Hotel.

At the time, he had been unable to do anything about the emptiness of having vaguely forgotten that his son existed, and had wanted to keep that name tag simply so he could remember, even if it was only an empty shell.

Du-pal took it out.

[Guardian]

***

Geon-su's surgery ended without incident.

After organizing the instruments and finishing the sterilization, Young-cheol stepped back, drenched in sweat.

“For now, for now, I think.... I think it was successful.”

Geon-su, still unconscious from the anesthesia, lay there almost like a corpse, and the moment Du-pal saw him, he burst into tears.

“It really, really went well, right? Doctor? It really did, right?”

“......Yes. He should be fine. He'll be all right.”

Young-cheol's expression as he said it was complicated.

For him as well, this had ultimately only been a theoretical procedure.

He could not be certain exactly how well Geon-su was until they got outside.

Based on all the experiences they had accumulated so far, there was a high chance Geon-su would be healthier than before, but in the end, everything was still only a possibility.

What if there was even a 1% chance of failure? No one could say for certain.

But they had to do it.

Even modern medicine did not have surgeries with a 100% success rate.

And they could not leave Geon-su inside a ghost story that was already damaged and might collapse at any moment.

'The procedure was necessary.'

Young-cheol wiped his hands once more with the remaining disinfectant.

Then he practically poured disinfectant over Han-su as well, since Han-su would be carrying Geon-su.

As a doctor, he knew perfectly well this was not a flawless method, but doing even this much seemed like the only way he could put his mind at ease.

“Then take those two up to the rooftop first.”

Su-myeon handed Han-su the rooftop key.

The key landed in his damp hand before the disinfectant had even dried.

“If it looks like things aren't going to work out, you should just leave too.”

“No. I'll be back soon.”

Well, of course you will.

Su-myeon had only said it out of courtesy.

And so Geon-su, Young-cheol, and Han-su left the broadcasting room first to make their escape.

Han-su took the remaining match with him just in case.

“Then let's get started too.”

At Su-myeon's words, Ha-min began checking the broadcasting equipment with him.

The rooftop was only one floor above, so the escape group should be able to get out quickly.

“I think this is the button that turns on the microphone.”

After examining the equipment for a while, Ha-min pressed several buttons.

Once he had activated every speaker on every floor, Ha-min pointed out the largest button to Du-pal.

Du-pal hesitated at his words, then moved his hand.

The name tag changed from the name of an individual, 'Park Du-pal', to the qualification of 'Guardian'.

“Ah, ahem....”

Du-pal carefully stepped in front of the microphone and cleared his throat.

If there was even a possibility, Du-pal was willing to try.

The moment sound echoed throughout the whole school, Wendy would undoubtedly come closer.

“We'll figure something out about that too.”

Su-myeon and Ha-min adjusted their grips on their weapons.

With several anesthetic syringes prepared as well, the two stood ready as Du-pal cautiously continued speaking into the microphone.

“Kids, ......it's gotten far too late.”

His voice carried a trace of hesitation.

Then Du-pal's eyes fell on an alert on his phone.

[#WOLF: Park Geon-su has successfully escaped]

Du-pal had been speaking in a trembling voice, but when he saw the message Han-su had posted, emotion surged up inside him.

Now, his son was safe.

Whether he would be healthy, whether everything would truly be all right, remained unknown, but that had already been true even before ghost stories became involved in their lives.

But the hundreds of children here.

What kind of lives were the fathers who had forgotten them, unable even to wait for them, living now?

“I'm sorry it took us so long to come get you.”

The first thing Du-pal could say was an apology.

And the only thing he could say after that was a plea.

“Now... now let's stop and go home.”