Chapter 14

Hwaae High School (10)

There were still about twenty-five minutes left before eighth period ended.

I filled that time by giving the home economics lab a thorough cleaning.

I neatly stacked the desks and chairs that had been piled up haphazardly, organized the scattered cushions and comic books, and wiped down the whiteboard once more to remove the marker stains left behind by the earlier halfhearted cleaning. Then I washed the eraser sponge and set it out to dry.

“Tsk, tsk. We save a guy who nearly died, feed him, and suddenly he’s feeling well enough to do this.”

“It looks better when it’s clean.”

“True, but who bothers cleaning inside a ghost story?”

“I was hired as a cleaner.”

“Do you have to have an answer for everything?”

Truthfully, I wanted to tell him that I also wanted to give Team Leader Yong a proper shave and iron the wrinkles out of his uniform.

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

“It’s nothing.”

He would probably look at me like an even bigger lunatic if I said that.

My body was hardly in any condition to move around. My hearing and sense of balance still hadn’t fully recovered, and my ribs throbbed with pain.

But the cleaner the room became, the more my anxiety subsided.

I suppose it was healing for the mind, at least.

Apparently unable to bear watching me any longer, Team Leader Yong finally spoke.

“You’re going home after this is over.”

“I can’t. I’m a third-year student.”

“You still have the name tag you were using.”

“I threw it away.”

“What?!”

I hadn’t, of course.

Pretending not to hear him, I continued working diligently. By the time the bell signaling the end of eighth period rang, the lab was dark due to the lack of lighting, but otherwise looked like a pristine new classroom.

“Hmm.”

Satisfying.

I could die without regrets now.

Well, there were still things left to do.

“Let’s go.”

“I’ll go out and open the door!”

Myeong Haebin swiftly climbed through the window and unlocked the door for us.

Outside, the halls were filled with student anomalies bustling around as they cleaned.

We would have to blend in among them.

“Not one of them showed their face during recess, but now there are tons of them.”

“Nothing good ever comes from having more of those things around.”

We decided to return to our classroom first.

In schools, each student was usually assigned a specific area to clean, so we needed to check our assignments.

“Oh, look. There’s a file on the lectern.”

An open file listing the cleaning assignments lay on the lectern.

The left side listed areas such as sweeping Row One, mopping Row One, cleaning the blackboard erasers, and cleaning the restroom. Names appeared to be written on the right, but ours weren’t among them.

“Should we write our names in the blank spaces?”

“There is an assignment for cleaning the third-year faculty office, but another student already has it.”

You couldn’t expect good fortune to always lie conveniently at your feet.

Still, we had been granted a small amount of luck this time.

“Look. It says ‘temporary’ beside this one.”

Being ignored could be quite useful.

Apparently, one student had been sent from each class. Four student anomalies were cleaning their respective sections of the faculty office, while “teachers” occupied the sparsely scattered desks, staring at pitch-black monitors and hammering arbitrarily at their keyboards.

Which section belongs to Class 2 of the third year?

The notebook I was looking for had to be somewhere inside this faculty office.

It had to belong to a third-year student. After all, third-years were the only students required to attend evening self-study at this school.

But I had an assigned task now, so cleaning the faculty office came first.

When I looked more closely, I noticed a pattern.

Each student anomaly had been assigned one of the aisles between the teachers’ desks.

This must be my section.

It was the aisle containing the desks of the Class 5 and Class 4 homeroom teachers, as well as the sociology teacher.

The trash can is over there, and I’ll use the broom we brought.

Cleaning might appear simple, but the proper method changed depending on the location.

Office cleaning, in particular, required extra care. Some people absolutely hated having their belongings touched.

Would things be any different merely because this was a ghost story?

No.

I decided to think of this place as a congregation of every nightmare customer imaginable.

Shall I begin?

First, I swept the paper cups and snack wrappers from the “teachers’” desks onto the floor.

I didn’t touch a single sheet of A4 paper or any of the files.

However, instead of falling neatly, some of the crumbs rolled beneath the sociology teacher’s desk, where they had already dried into hard lumps.

“Excuse me.”

I had even politely asked permission, but the broom couldn’t dislodge them.

What would I have done if I hadn’t brought this? Everything proves useful if you carry it around long enough.

I had anticipated something like this and brought my work cleaning kit, which was strapped to my side.

I sprayed the area with a cleaning solution containing weakly diluted bleach, took out a cleaning cloth, and scrubbed it thoroughly. Then I untangled the cables beneath the desk one by one, gathered them together, and secured them with Velcro cable ties.

While meticulously cleaning even the storage unit attached to the desk, I found a tray labeled:

[CONFISCATED ITEMS]

This is…

Inside it lay a black notebook bearing the name “Lee Seryeong.”

I glanced around before opening it.

There was no doubt about it. This was what I had been searching for.

Warning! If you don’t end the game properly, the ghost will follow you.

Materials
White paper, red ballpoint penMethodDraw a large “O” and “X” on the paper. Two people sit facing each other and hold the same ballpoint pen together.

The notebook was also filled with games such as , , and , every one of which involved summoning or seeing ghosts.

They went beyond being unrelated to schoolwork.

They looked downright dangerous.

As I contemplated taking the notebook, the atmosphere inside the faculty office changed.

“…finished?”

I couldn’t hear clearly, so I poked my head out.

A “teacher” was standing there.

Why was the teacher wearing white gloves?

Like a meticulous inspector, the “teacher” walked through an area cleaned by one of the student anomalies.

A white-gloved hand carefully swept across the desks, partitions, and files.

“Why didn’t you clean this?”

The “teacher” stopped in front of a flowerpot containing a pitch-black plant that grew perfectly straight.

After stroking the plant’s stem, a dark, powdery residue clung to the teacher’s fingertips.

“…!”

Whether startled or terrified, the student anomaly hesitantly backed away.

“Making excuses isn’t good. Hold out those useless little hands.”

The instant I wondered whether the teacher would produce a switch, the “teacher’s” hand struck the student anomaly’s palms.

There was no switch.

No disciplinary rod.

But that alone was enough.

All ten of the student anomaly’s fingers were cleanly severed and fell to the floor.

My entire body stiffened.

That goes far beyond simply being scolded.

Was this why the anomaly had so readily handed over its faculty-office cleaning assignment?

Even the silence in which the student anomaly endlessly gathered up its own fingers was chilling.

“Now, you’ve finished over here too, haven’t you?”

Yet the “teacher” and student anomalies continued the inspection as though what had just happened were perfectly ordinary.

I couldn’t afford to stand around either.

Without my fingers, I wouldn’t even be able to escape this place.

Would I even survive in the first place?

Stop shaking. You don’t have time to shake!

Even as I screamed inwardly, my hands were already reaching into my cleaning kit.

I had to use everything I possessed.

Glass cleaner for the desktops.

A dry microfiber cloth for the window frames and partitions.

“You didn’t clean thoroughly enough over here either.”

As the “teacher” completed each inspection, not a single student survived unscathed.

Every one of them had some fault found with their work and lost their fingers.

Just a little more. I need to align the mouse and keyboard perfectly too…!

I couldn’t hear much, but the anxious current spreading through the faculty office toppled through the room like a line of dominoes, setting every one of my nerves on edge.

A finger severed from the student beside me rolled all the way over to my section.

Struggling not to acknowledge it, I rummaged through my cleaning kit.

Febr—ze? No. People have different preferences when it comes to fragrances. Ah, found it.

I sprayed the liquid from a small plastic bottle onto the back of my hand and checked its scent. Then I misted it through the air in my assigned area.

Am I finished?

I turned around to conduct one final inspection and nearly suffered cardiac arrest.

The “teacher’s” face was directly in front of mine.

“…”

“Is everything finished here too?”

My heart nearly leaped out of my chest.

“Yes. You may inspect it.”

I thought I would be nervous because I hadn’t had the chance to inspect it myself.

But when I actually watched the teacher touch and feel every surface one by one, I wasn’t afraid.

It’ll be clean.

Perhaps it was because I was confident.

During my time as a cleaner, I had encountered countless clients who searched for any possible fault. I had even handled jobs with absurdly short deadlines.

And not once had I ever received a complaint about an area assigned to me.

“Hmm…”

The “teacher” even bent down to examine the space beneath the desks before humming thoughtfully.

“Perfect. You did an excellent job, Kim Hanmu.”

I did it.

I had no idea why this made me so happy, but I clenched my fist behind my back.

“And the air feels a little different here, doesn’t it?”

Oh, that.

I quickly raised the bottle I was holding so the teacher could see it clearly.

“I sprayed a deodorizer. It’s unscented, so the air would smell as clean as possible.”

“That explains it. Very good.”

I received a favorable assessment.

There were several types of deodorizer.

Some masked existing smells with a fragrance, while others eliminated odors entirely by capturing the particles that caused them.

I had chosen the latter.

It seemed I had made the correct choice.

“Everyone should follow Kim Hanmu’s example. Even the smell is perfect.”

Praise didn’t get much higher than that.

I never imagined I would live long enough to be complimented by an anomaly.

While the teacher was in such a good mood, perhaps it might be possible.

“Teacher, could I possibly… ask you a favor?”

“Go ahead.”

The teacher answered kindly.

I couldn’t let myself be deceived.

But I had to try.

If I left now, this opportunity might never come again.

“Could I take the notebook that was confiscated from Seryeong? She said she deeply regrets what she did.”

Without displaying the slightest doubt, the teacher reached beneath the desk of the Class 5 homeroom teacher and lifted the notebook.

“This one?”

“Yes. Please.”

The teacher appeared to consider it.

The two pupils embedded like tiny dots in the teacher’s pure-white eyes swept over the section I had cleaned.

“Very well. Consider it a reward for cleaning so thoroughly.”

“Thank you!”

Success.

The notebook finally fell into my hands.

I bent ninety degrees at the waist, accepted it with both hands, and left the faculty office.

The moment I stepped outside, I leaned against the wall and opened it.

I couldn’t bear not knowing what they had done to put us through all this trouble.

But as I flipped through the notebook, an irritated furrow deepened between my brows.

“Are you kidding me…?”