Chapter 16
Hwaae High School (12)
[Lee Seryeong]
Three syllables written on a green name tag.
Nothing I had encountered in this place had been human.
The teacher anomalies had no eyelids and possessed deformed body structures, while the student anomalies had no facial features and couldn’t speak.
But Lee Seryeong was different.
“Oh, come on, Senior. You’re frightening her.”
“Ah—right. Sorry.”
Still dazed, I stumbled back as Myeong Haebin took my hand and pulled me away.
“We startled you, didn’t we? Sorry. We didn’t mean to. We were looking for the owner of this notebook.”
Myeong Haebin coaxed Lee Seryeong in a gentle, reassuring voice.
Startled by the sight of the notebook, Lee Seryeong looked back and forth between us before holding out the crumpled sheet of paper in her hand.
“Is… this what you’re looking for?”
I recognized the paper.
It was a page torn from the notebook.
As expected, it contained instructions for another game.
“Oh, for crying out loud. Did you even know what this was before you tried it?”
“I’m sorry…”
The moment Team Leader Yong saw the title, he clutched his head.
Even I could only let out a hollow laugh.
- Materials
A stuffed doll, rice, red thread, your own fingernails, a sharp implement, and salt water.
- How to Play
- Remove all the stuffing from the doll. Fill it with rice and your fingernail clippings, then sew it shut using red thread.
- Fill a basin or bathtub with water and submerge half the doll.
- Stab the doll with the sharp implement and shout, “I found you! Now you’re it!”
- Leave the sharp implement beside the doll and hide.
- How to End the Game
- Sprinkle salt water on the doll and shout, “The game is over.”
One-Man Hide-and-Seek.
I knew the basic idea behind it. It was a ghost-summoning game that had once caused a stir online and was widely said to be extremely dangerous.
But the instructions sounded far too familiar.
Unauthorized items.
Uncooked food.
Activities unrelated to schoolwork.
And a doll?
A teddy bear?
“You played this game in the home economics lab, didn’t you?”
“…How did you know?”
Of course.
The app had been telling us from the beginning that One-Man Hide-and-Seek had taken place inside the lab.
When we first entered, the sink had been filled with water.
There had also been a teddy-bear cushion in the corner.
Should I have found the stitches across its stomach suspicious?
In a room filled with blacked-out comic books and objects that flew at your head whenever anyone said the word “class,” why would a teddy bear with its stomach sewn shut have seemed unusual?
Team Leader Yong frowned and crossed his arms as he read the instructions beside me.
“Tell us what happened.”
“I-I should have listened when Jinseo told me not to do it.”
Jinseo?
Was that the friend she had communicated with through the graffiti?
There’s always a reason people tell you not to do something.
The words rose to the tip of my tongue, but I wasn’t enough of a bastard to scold a girl whose eyes were brimming with tears.
I swallowed them.
Apparently aware that she was at fault, Lee Seryeong lowered her head and muttered,
“Evening self-study lasts so long that I thought no one would notice if we slipped out for a little while.”
“It obviously looks dangerous.”
“But… ghosts don’t really exist. We only did it as a joke. Then the school suddenly became strange, the students and teachers turned into ghosts, and the doll actually came alive and started chasing us…”
Lee Seryeong’s hands were trembling violently.
Myeong Haebin, who had been listening, sighed and crossed her arms like Team Leader Yong.
“I’m only telling you this, Senior, but it’s a common pattern. There are plenty of ghost stories that begin when someone does something dangerous as a joke.”
“Ghost… stories?”
Was there nothing she wouldn’t say in front of the kid?
I pulled Myeong Haebin several steps away and whispered quietly.
“Then are you saying this entire school ghost story was created by One-Man Hide-and-Seek?”
“That’s what it looks like right now. It seems the entire area where the game was played became part of the ghost story.”
The idea that a mere game could create a ghost story sounded absurd.
But when I remembered the ritual I had experienced in that house at the top of the mountain, it didn’t seem entirely impossible.
Still, something felt wrong.
A sense of incongruity rose from my toes, like a gear spinning uselessly in a corner of my mind.
I felt as though the answer were about to surface, yet the pressure beneath my sternum only grew tighter.
I turned it over in my mind again and again.
Then, with the impact of someone driving a chisel into my skull, I remembered.
The app.
[Completion Requirement: ■■ Hwaae High School’s One-Man Hide-and-Seek ghost story.]
- All students must leave school after the daily schedule has ended.
- Do not keep unauthorized items on school grounds.
(Uncooked foodstuffs, bladed objects such as knives or scissors, etc.) - Activities unrelated to academic studies are subject to disciplinary action.
- One-Man Hide-and-Seek does not end until every person hiding has been eliminated or the game has been properly concluded.
The app screen, which had looked smeared over as though someone had deliberately obscured it, was now visible.
Everything except one part.
As I read the newly revealed words, goose bumps burned across the back of my neck.
Lee Seryeong had secretly left evening self-study and begun One-Man Hide-and-Seek.
We had also left the study hall without permission during evening self-study.
My phone had vibrated the moment we stepped outside.
The fragmented information in my mind converged into a single conclusion.
Did this mean…
One-Man Hide-and-Seek had already begun?
Rattle—bang!
Without warning, the classroom’s back door was violently flung open.
“New friends!”
It was the familiar teddy-bear cushion.
But now it held an enormous utility knife in one hand. Its stomach had been sewn shut with red thread, and its black button eyes gleamed.
“Do you want to play hide-and-seek with me?”
Its voice sounded like a mechanical recording from a cheap toy, yet it triggered an instinctive sense of danger.
“Is that the bastard?”
“What? Y-yes.”
“I wasn’t asking you. Dammit. How did it find us?”
“I think the game began the moment we left the study hall.”
Team Leader Yong roughly raked his fingers through his hair, rapidly folded the instructions he was holding, and stuffed them into his pocket.
Ignoring him, the teddy bear pointed the razor-sharp, oversized utility knife at us.
“I’ll give you thirty seconds to hide. Rea~dy, start!”
“Follow me!”
Team Leader Yong violently shoved aside the desks blocking the entrance and cleared a path.
Dammit.
Here I was, at my age, being forced to play hide-and-seek.
“Senior, are you good at hide-and-seek?”
“I wouldn’t know. I’ve never played.”
As I followed Team Leader Yong, I grabbed the hand of the deathly pale, trembling Lee Seryeong.
“C-can I come with you?”
“What are you talking about?”
I pulled the hesitant girl to her feet and looked at Myeong Haebin. She shrugged as though it made no difference to her.
“If that’s what you want, Senior. It seems she’s been found too.”
I hadn’t asked anyone’s permission.
Whether there were three adults or four people altogether, hiding would be nearly impossible either way.
Team Leader Yong frowned at me briefly, but apparently didn’t want to waste what little time we had left.
“No teachers in sight. There was salt in the lab, right?”
“Yes. I also confirmed that the sink has running water.”
To end the game, we had to sprinkle salt water on the doll.
And we already knew where to find everything we needed.
Fifteen, fourteen…
I continued counting the seconds since the countdown began.
We had to climb to the lounge on the fourth floor, descend one level, and return to the home economics lab on the third floor.
Ordinarily, the trip wouldn’t have taken even a minute.
Now, however, that short corridor felt like an endless runway.
Eleven, ten.
We were halfway across the fourth-floor corridor when Team Leader Yong spotted something.
He immediately opened the door to a nearby first-year classroom and practically hurled us inside.
“…!”
Pain flashed before my eyes as though one of my cracked ribs had pierced my lung. With my sense of balance damaged, the floor seemed to pitch beneath me like an ocean wave.
The door quietly closed.
Before even a second seemed to pass, the silhouette of a “teacher” carrying a flashlight appeared against the window.
“Ghk—cough…”
Only after the beam had completely passed did I release a painful breath.
Team Leader Yong helped me up, looking concerned.
“Are you all right?”
“No—I mean, yes. I just felt dizzy for a moment… Thank you.”
“There are less than ten seconds left. Senior, why don’t you hide here? We can go by ourselves.”
“I’m fine. Open the door.”
I had lost track of the countdown.
Myeong Haebin had said there were fewer than ten seconds left, but after accounting for the time it took the teacher to pass, the doll might already have started searching.
I lowered my screaming body as far as possible and stepped into the corridor.
I didn’t know where the doll would begin its search.
But if we could reach the lounge at the end of the hall and descend a single flight of stairs, we could end this.
Then something round poked its head around the lounge stairwell.
Black button eyes reflected the moonlight.
“I found you.”
The muffled voice produced by the twitching fabric lodged itself in my mind with unnatural clarity.
It had found us already?
“Goddammit. We’re taking the central staircase.”
Team Leader Yong immediately changed course.
The game wasn’t over yet.
After all, we were still alive.
But the moment I stepped forward to follow him, the weight held by my hand suddenly dropped toward the floor.
“I-I’m sorry. My legs gave out.”
It was Lee Seryeong.
She had followed without saying a word until now, but perhaps the pressure was simply too much for an ordinary high school student.
“It’s okay. Get up.”
I leaned back and pulled with my full weight to help her stand.
But something seemed to be holding her down, and she couldn’t rise at all.
Had she twisted her ankle?
Or had fear made her muscles seize up?
“I’m so sorry. I can’t put any strength into my legs…”
“Senior, leave her behind!”
Myeong Haebin’s shout, barely louder than a whisper, reached me.
I could sense it without turning around.
The teddy bear was drawing closer with a waddling gait, dragging its oversized utility knife across the floor.
I was the one holding Lee Seryeong’s hand, not the other way around.
All I had to do was relax my fingers.
But I couldn’t let go.
Maybe it was because I remembered my former coworkers, who had already died just yesterday.
How terrified must she have been, trapped alone in this hellish school?
All she had done wrong was play a game out of curiosity.
I tried to hoist the sobbing Lee Seryeong onto my back, but she was unbearably heavy.
“Just come with us!”
Myeong Haebin’s quiet shout turned desperate. She grabbed my arm and tried to drag me away by force.
But I shook off her hand.
It wasn’t particularly difficult.
“I know you don’t care about anyone’s safety except mine, Haebin. But she’s just a child.”
“Senior, open your eyes and look properly. She’s an anomaly.”
Her ice-cold rebuke carved into me.
“What?”
“You heard me. She’s an anomaly.”
My gaze fell upon Lee Seryeong, who was practically hanging from my arm.
Tears streamed down her deathly pale face as she pleaded with me.
“I’m sorry I did something I was told not to do. Please save me. Just this once, please save me. I’ll never do it again. Please…”
My head burned.
I couldn’t think rationally.
Wasn’t it possible that Myeong Haebin merely wanted Lee Seryeong to be an anomaly?
That she was telling me to abandon the girl for my own sake?
“You crazy bastard.”
Was that directed at me?