Chapter 47: Mujin High School (3)

[3. When your name is called during roll call, answering three times will cause you to become fully assimilated into this world. Never respond to roll call.]

A clear voice whispered as if from directly behind him.

Su-myeon was startled, but he turned around slowly.

Standing right behind him was a girl so small she could easily have passed for a middle school student.

"......"

And of all places, they were standing directly in front of the third window on the third floor.

Su-myeon instinctively knew that the gaze he had briefly glimpsed like a phantom that afternoon had belonged to this girl.

Her disheveled long blonde hair was so pale it was almost white, and beneath it, pink eyes glittered brightly.

The neat one-piece dress she wore, reminiscent of a uniform from some foreign boarding school, looked utterly out of place in this distinctly Korean school.

Yet she possessed far too much vitality to be mistaken for a monster or anything dangerous.

"......Wendy?"

Hwi-yeon guessed at the fairy-tale character, following Su-myeon's earlier mention of Peter Pan.

But the girl called Wendy did not so much as glance at Hwi-yeon.

Her eyes remained fixed solely on Su-myeon.

The noisy corridor was still filled with meaningless clamor.

And yet, amid it all, the girl's soft, high-pitched voice came through with unnatural clarity.

"You're different, aren't you?"

At Wendy's words, Su-myeon thought of Belle.

Even within ghost stories, there could be beings who retained a lucid consciousness.

Was she one of them?

Far too many unfamiliar characters he knew nothing about were appearing this time around.

Before Su-myeon could answer, the bell rang in his ears once more.

"This is bad!"

Geon-su grabbed Su-myeon and Ha-min in alarm.

"We need to get inside!"

They had to get into a room.

Any room.

Just as they were about to turn back toward the restroom, Cheshire tugged firmly on Su-myeon's hair.

Instinctively grasping what the doll wanted, Su-myeon spoke before leaving.

"We're looking for a friend."

When he said that to Wendy, she answered flatly.

"Finding someone won't let you leave."

"There's an exit. Why wouldn't we be able to?"

Su-myeon shot back immediately, and Wendy's expression shifted ever so slightly.

It was a strange exchange, but perhaps enough for her to catch a glimpse of what kind of person Su-myeon was.

Just as they were about to turn back the way they had come—

"Not that way."

Wendy spoke.

"A teacher's coming."

The bell had already stopped ringing.

The corridor had fallen silent.

At the far end, a dark shadow was approaching.

Just as Wendy had warned, something was coming.

Had they continued running in that direction, they would have met it head-on.

"Come in."

Wendy opened the classroom door beside them.

With no better option, they had no choice but to follow her lead.

[3-3]

Of all places, it had to be Class 3 of Year 3.

But on second thought, perhaps that was actually a stroke of luck.

Thinking as much, Su-myeon whispered to Ha-min.

"See if your friend's in here."

Ha-min was searching for two friends.

Even if the one who had disappeared yesterday had gone to the science lab, the whereabouts of the other were completely unknown.

And they still couldn't even be sure that the person who had gone to the science lab was Ha-min's friend in the first place.

Ha-min nodded and sat down at an empty desk near the back.

"......"

Su-myeon noticed two Rose Coins resting on the desk he had chosen and picked them up.

Wendy casually settled into the seat directly in front of him.

Then, from the direction of the lectern, an unidentifiable black shadow came creeping into the classroom.

The writhing mass of clotted darkness, squirming like slime, stretched itself to human height and lifted the attendance roster from the lectern.

"I'll take roll now."

The black shadow spoke like a teacher.

But its voice was grotesque, as though it were forcing nonexistent vocal cords to vibrate.

That voice began calling the students' names one by one.

"Number 1, Kang Han-su."

Remarkably, the names were arranged in Korean alphabetical order, placing Han-su first.

"......"

Following the rules, Han-su did not answer.

An unfamiliar name was called for number 2.

And then—

"Number 3, ■■■."

"Yes."

The name belonging to the notorious number 3 — the seat said to always be empty — came out as a strangely mangled noise, impossible to make out.

Ha-min craned his neck slightly to see who had answered.

Su-myeon likewise turned toward the seat belonging to number 3.

Since the student was seated in the very front row, it was difficult to see their face.

All he could make out was the back of a neatly groomed black-haired head above a standard navy-and-teal school uniform.

"Number 13, Park Geon-su."

He was sitting right beside Su-myeon.

When Su-myeon firmly grabbed him to keep him from answering, Geon-su tapped the back of his hand.

'I know.'

Seeing him silently mouth the words, Su-myeon understood that Geon-su hadn't survived here this long for nothing.

The rest of the group's names were called and passed without response as well.

Since the surname Han came later in the order, Su-myeon's own name was called near the end.

"Number 31, Han Su-myeon."

His name passed in silence, and the next one followed.

"Number 32, ■■."

"Yes."

The person who answered the final name on the roster was Wendy.

Su-myeon frowned when he realized that Wendy's name, too, had been impossible to hear.

Aside from Wendy and Peter Pan, every other student had been called by their real names — just like Su-myeon's group.

So his suspicions had been correct.

All the students apart from those two were missing people who had somehow fallen into this place.

He wasn't confident he could get every one of them out safely.

If there were thirty students in every classroom, then just how many people were trapped here?

"This period is Korean Language."

Wendy turned her head slightly from the seat in front of him and quietly informed him.

The Shadow Teacher wrote four characters across the blackboard for that day's lesson.

[Blood Writing]

What kind of psychotic school made that a Korean Language activity?

Then again, nothing could have been more appropriate for a ghost story curriculum.

Thinking this place truly was the worst, Su-myeon exchanged glances with the others.

At least this was a situation he already knew about, and a class whose strategy he had explained to them beforehand.

After receiving nods from Ha-min and Hwi-yeon, his gaze met Han-su's.

'But why doesn't Kang Han-su look any younger?'

A world of childish innocence.

Peter Pan, who dreamed of Neverland.

True to that story, this was a ghost story where everyone reverted — at least in appearance — to their adolescent selves.

Yet Han-su, in particular, looked almost exactly the same as usual apart from the school uniform.

'Did he just look old even as a kid?'

Maybe his cheeks were slightly rounder.

Or maybe not.

While Su-myeon's thoughts wandered, the Shadow Teacher began to move.

SCRAPE—

Starting from the front row, the Shadow Teacher began cutting off the students' finger joints.

The basic material required for blood writing was blood.

And the Shadow Teacher was graciously preparing the necessary supplies for its students.

Watching this, Geon-su bit down hard on his own finger.

A crunching sound followed.

Then he tapped Su-myeon and silently mouthed the words again.

'Do this.'

Remarkably, it was the exact same solution Su-myeon had prepared for this situation.

He was somewhat impressed that Geon-su had managed to figure it out on his own, but there was no time for conversation.

The Shadow Teacher was rapidly approaching the back rows.

"......!"

With no time to waste, Su-myeon bit down hard on his own index finger.

Unfortunately, when he looked at it, all he saw were teeth marks.

He held his breath.

It hurt like hell, but not a drop of blood came out.

"Haah...."

He drew another deep breath and bit down again.

Still not enough.

Everyone else seemed to have managed without much trouble, blood steadily dripping from their fingers.

Su-myeon could only feel frustrated.

Had anyone here ever bitten their own hand hard enough to draw blood?

For that matter, most people had probably never bitten someone else's hand hard enough to make them bleed either.

For an ordinary person, it was the sort of experience they could go their entire life without ever needing.

It was much harder than it looked.

Tap, tap.

As Su-myeon gnawed at his finger with a pained groan, Cheshire tapped him on the cheek.

The cotton doll usually couldn't be bothered to do anything and simply watched from the sidelines.

So what did he want now?

Su-myeon held out his hand toward Cheshire as if asking what was wrong.

CRUNCH—

He nearly screamed.

The mouth he had always assumed was nothing more than thread stitched onto fabric suddenly split wide open, revealing rows of sharp teeth that clamped down on Su-myeon's finger.

The sharp pain, combined with the sheer shock of it, sent his heart pounding.

"......"

Hwi-yeon, who had witnessed the whole thing from right beside him, stared wide-eyed with one hand clamped over her mouth.

On the bright side, the finger now riddled with puncture wounds was dripping blood beautifully.

Su-myeon awkwardly held his throbbing finger aloft and silently waited for the Shadow Teacher to pass.

"......"

The Shadow Teacher quietly moved past the student who had dutifully prepared the materials for his blood writing.

Its grotesque, writhing body constantly churned and rippled, endlessly shifting just to maintain its shape.

Thankfully, it had no smell.

Even so, the sight of its pitch-black body provoked an instinctive sense of revulsion.

SCRAPE—

When it reached a student who had failed to prepare, the Shadow Teacher extended part of its body like a tentacle and shaped the end into a blade.

With every clean slice through a finger joint, the smell of blood grew thicker inside the classroom.

The metallic stench sent waves of nausea rolling through them.

Some students had already lost so many sections of their fingers that their hands had been cut all the way back to the wrists.

Yet what was even harder to endure was the fact that despite all that blood, not a single one of them screamed.

Every student wore a bright, cheerful smile, happily engrossed in the lesson.

"......"

Across the classroom, Ha-min had both hands clamped over his mouth and was trembling violently as he fought the urge to vomit.

The classroom was stained crimson by the sunset.

And against that red, the blood looked darker still, almost black as it soaked the desks and pooled across the floor.

Thicker than water, it struck the floor in heavy, distinct drops.

Su-myeon pressed a single period onto his sheet of paper in blood, then cradled his injured finger.

At least the wounds left by Cheshire's teeth clotted more easily than a severed joint would have.

"......"

The others had done the same.

Each sheet of paper bore nothing more than a single period drawn in blood.

Geon-su apparently hadn't known about this trick.

He had simply been watching Su-myeon, so Su-myeon carefully whispered to him.

"You just have to finish the writing. A period by itself counts as a completed piece."

Still only half convinced, Geon-su followed Su-myeon's instructions and stamped a period onto his own paper.

Su-myeon stole a glance at another student's work.

Some sheets were so drenched in blood that the writing had become completely illegible.

One, however, was still readable.

Driven by a faint sense of curiosity, Su-myeon read it.

'Three steps bound, imprisoned in eternity — now we are together forever. Forever. Forever. Through endless time. Until the blood pooling at our fingertips rises to fill our lungs and rots away. We are all together.'

Faced with that deeply unsettling passage, Su-myeon decided not to read any more.

The suffocating class dragged on for a while longer.

"All right, shall we see how far everyone got?"

The Shadow Teacher's torn, saccharine voice grated especially harshly on the ears.

The shadow squelched its way across the blood-drenched classroom floor.

Inspecting each student's work one by one, the Shadow Teacher eventually stopped in front of one child.

"......"

Now that Su-myeon looked more closely, something about the student's beaming smile seemed wrong.

The mouth was smiling.

But the eyes were overflowing with terror.

Beneath trembling fingertips lay a completely blank sheet of paper.

Seeing the empty page, the Shadow Teacher slowly leaned forward.

"Hh... ngh......"

A fear-choked whimper escaped the student, almost like a sob.

At that instant, the shadow poured over the student's head like liquid and swallowed it whole.

"...!"

Hwi-yeon covered her mouth and turned away.

The student shuddered violently as though being electrocuted, then suddenly went still as the shadow slowly withdrew.

The eyes that had contained a faint trace of self-awareness only moments before were now utterly vacant.

As though something inside had been devoured.

Torn away by the shadow.

All the student could do now was smile.

Brightly.

Innocently.

Emptily.

Then the Shadow Teacher moved on.

And stopped directly in front of Su-myeon.