Chapter 51

[7. Hide, hide well. I can see your hair.]

In the midst of all this, the rules delivered as scripts through the Heartphone were completely deranged.

The screen, formatted like a school newsletter, was filled from top to bottom with chilling phrases.

But Han-su had a separate set of rules he'd received from Su-myeon, so he refused to let them shake him.

[Ha-min: Han-su, I found them]

[Ha-min: Both of them!]

[Ha-min: Let's get out now! We have to get out!]

Ha-min, who seemed to have checked his Heartphone as well, hurriedly sent Su-myeon a message.

Su-myeon's reply appeared in the group chat almost immediately.

[Su-myeon: I'm already looking for a way.]

[Hwi-yeon: Mr. Su-myeon has bought us some time]

Judging by the fact that the two of them were looking at a phone together, their situation didn't seem particularly urgent.

Rather than worrying about Hwi-yeon, who was with Su-myeon, it made more sense to focus on their own predicament.

[Su-myeon: Still on the first floor?]

"You can contact each other?"

Min-jun and Geon-su, practically glued to Ha-min's side, peered at the chat.

The more extraordinary the situation became, the more clearly the truth sank in for Geon-su.

The people who had entered this time were different.

Completely different.

And now, the way they had been behaving like equals struck him as strangely unnatural.

Aside from Ha-min and his friend, the others were clearly more than ten years older than them.

"...Are they really... not ordinary people...?"

While Geon-su struggled to come to terms with that realization, Han-su received a brief outline of Su-myeon's plan and slipped his phone back into his pocket.

Everything was still proceeding according to Su-myeon's plan.

In that case, following it exactly was their best chance of staying safe.

"Then, just as Mr. Su-myeon said, we'll go to the infirmary."

Su-myeon had given them fifteen minutes.

They would spend ten of those minutes gathering what they needed, then regroup afterward.

"The infirmary... you said?"

Geon-su hesitated, faltering at the infirmary entrance.

At the far end of the first floor, a Shadow Teacher wearing a remarkably convincing white coat occupied the infirmary.

Naturally, it was also where medicines and similar supplies would be kept.

Uneasy about the place, Geon-su had never once dared to enter.

Han-su, however, opened the door without hesitation and walked straight inside, reciting the line he'd prepared with a perfectly expressionless face.

"My friend took cold medicine and got too sleepy, so we came here. May he sleep here just for the lunch period?"

Han-su spoke evenly as he pointed to the anatomical model slung over his shoulder.

"■■■."

The teacher's response sounded like fingernails scraping across a chalkboard and was impossible to make out.

Whatever it had said, Han-su replied exactly as Su-myeon had instructed him.

"Aren't you going to eat, sir?"

At Han-su's words, the Shadow Teacher's misshapen upper body twitched slightly.

It was impossible to tell whether that meant agreement or something else, but a moment later, the Shadow Teacher slid out of the infirmary.

Han-su immediately laid the anatomical model on one of the beds.

"You said this kid's name is Ian?"

"Strictly speaking, it's Ahn."

Ha-min explained that Ian's given name consisted of a single syllable, and that he'd inherited the surnames of both his parents.

Seriously... were kids these days different?

As Han-su found the name somewhat unusual, Min-jun spoke with a strange expression on his face.

"We get confused too, so we just call him Ian."

Only now did Min-jun realize that he had completely forgotten about Ian all this time.

For the past several days, he had forgotten that Ian had disappeared.

He had even forgotten that someone with such an unusual name had ever existed.

"Is that why you've been acting strange lately?"

Min-jun muttered, looking at Ha-min with a grave expression.

Mujin High School's baseball team.

Even at a school considered one of the best in the country, Ha-min and Ian had been such evenly matched rivals that it was difficult to say which of them ranked higher.

Yet Min-jun had completely forgotten that fact.

And Ha-min, after losing his rival and becoming the team's undisputed ace, had begun skipping practice or failing to concentrate during training.

"How could I have forgotten him so completely...?"

Until he'd entered this nightmarish place, Min-jun hadn't found any of it strange.

On the contrary, he'd thought something entirely different.

If Ha-min was going to keep losing focus like that, then couldn't Min-jun simply work harder and surpass him?

That greed was what had driven him to come to school at dawn and make a wish to become the team's ace.

It was also why he hadn't listened properly when Ha-min warned him not to believe such ridiculous rumors.

Ha-min was someone Min-jun wanted to beat badly enough that he was willing to make a wish for it.

Naturally, none of Ha-min's advice or concern had truly reached him.

"......Do you get it now?"

Ha-min, rummaging through the infirmary drawers for the item Su-myeon had told them to find, answered Min-jun's muttering curtly.

Back when the rivalry between Ha-min and Ian had still been firmly established, the baseball team had had a very different atmosphere.

Rather than trying to surpass the two aces, everyone had focused on watching them compete while striving to improve their own performance.

The higher those two raised the level of each game, the more attention the rest of the team received as well.

If they wanted to get into a good university, all they had to do was perform well alongside them and produce results.

There was no point dwelling on it now.

But because Ian had been completely erased from everyone's memories, even the baseball team's once-stable atmosphere had fallen apart.

"Can we get him out of here in one piece? The thing you're looking for right now. If we find it, we can, right?"

Min-jun asked as he followed Ha-min's example and began opening drawers beside him.

Listening to the two students talk, Geon-su was searching one corner of the infirmary as well.

His stiff expression suggested he had a great deal on his mind.

He must have had worries of his own.

Han-su left him alone and spoke instead to Ian.

"For now, I don't know if you can hear me."

The body had a bizarre texture, somewhere between hard plastic and soft rubber.

Ian no longer felt like a living creature at all.

He seemed more like an object.

Even so, Han-su spoke to him calmly.

He had already rescued Hyeon-seok once, despite Hyeon-seok having looked no different from a mannequin at the time.

"Just hold on. We'll take you out with us."

After leaving him with those reassuring words, Han-su joined the others in searching the infirmary.

The item Su-myeon had mentioned had to be somewhere in here.

Something capable of restoring a body lost inside this ghost story....

"Found it!"

Geon-su, who had been searching one corner with a tense expression, suddenly shouted.

***

"Do you really think this was the right move?"

Hwi-yeon asked as she and Su-myeon left the classroom, blending into the stream of students heading toward the cafeteria.

Wendy, who had ended up leaving with them almost by circumstance, hesitated for a moment before turning to head in the opposite direction.

"Come with us."

Su-myeon stopped her before she could get away, then answered Hwi-yeon.

"It isn't the right move. We're in the middle of making it the right one."

Whether it would actually lead them to a safe escape route remained to be seen.

Caught by Su-myeon, Wendy stared at him in bewilderment.

Her eyes were translucent, yet unmistakably alive.

Even when Su-myeon covered his right eye as though rubbing it and looked at her solely through the Eye of Truth, her appearance remained exactly the same.

Wendy's unusually thin, frail arms bothered him slightly.

If even Geon-su couldn't remember how many months he'd been trapped here, then how long had beings like Wendy been inside?

Or, because they were characters belonging to a story, did the passage of time mean nothing to them at all?

With those thoughts lingering in his mind, Su-myeon led the two women toward the staff room.

Seeing him suddenly head in that direction, Wendy gave him a brief warning.

"You need to hide. Quickly."

"After I find one thing."

The staff room was on the same third floor, so they could reach it without going far.

Su-myeon entered and immediately began searching with an impassive expression.

As though everyone had gone to eat 'lunch', the staff room was completely deserted.

Not even a single shadow remained.

"What are you looking for?"

"The student roster."

Su-myeon answered Wendy flatly without slowing down.

Hwi-yeon immediately understood what he was after and began searching as well.

Any records identifying individual students would undoubtedly prove useful when searching for missing persons from now on.

"A whole year level, if possible. But I'll take whatever I can find."

With no one inside, the staff room was remarkably easy to search.

In an ordinary school, it would have made no sense for every teacher to leave the staff room empty at the same time.

But all the shadows were connected to one another, and Han-su had already planted the idea in the infirmary that teachers needed to eat too.

Based on that single piece of logic — teachers naturally had to eat as well — all the shadows had moved together.

"For now, let's just find it as quickly as—"

"If that's what you're looking for, it's here."

At Su-myeon's words, Wendy walked over with heavy steps, pulled out a booklet, and handed it to him.

It looked like an attendance register.

Her willingness to cooperate was far greater than he'd expected.

Su-myeon hesitated for a moment before accepting it.

"...Thank you."

Inside were the students' names and photographs.

After confirming that even Hwi-yeon's and Han-su's names and photos were included, Su-myeon immediately tucked the book under his arm.

There was no point trying to understand the principle behind it.

He wouldn't be able to make sense of it anyway.

"Let's go. We need to hide now."

They hurried out of the staff room as Su-myeon ran through their options in his head.

Even so, he couldn't afford to separate from Hwi-yeon or Wendy.

Being left alone inside a ghost story like this was something he should avoid whenever possible.

So where could three people hide for thirty minutes without being found...?

"By the way, why did you bring me with you?"

Wendy suddenly asked once they were back in the hallway.

Rather than offer some clumsy lie, Su-myeon decided to tell her the truth.

If the Eye of Truth had revealed her to be a monster, he might have hesitated.

But Wendy was still a being who retained both a human appearance and a human sense of self.

"Belle said you could help."

"........"

At Su-myeon's words, Wendy stopped walking.

Did I say something wrong?

The thought made Su-myeon stop and turn toward her as well.

Standing motionless in the middle of the hallway, Wendy looked somehow startled—

and somehow sad.

Her pale pink eyes met Su-myeon's, then drifted downward toward Cheshire hanging from his shoulder.

It hardly suited the situation to think about such a thing, but with that gloomy expression on her face, Wendy was an almost unrealistically beautiful girl.

"That couldn't have been about me."

Hearing the same despondency in her voice, Su-myeon stepped toward her again.

Inside a ghost story, someone who belonged to it—