Chapter 17

Hwaae High School (13)

The person who suddenly hurled a curse at me was none other than Team Leader Yong.

“I asked why you weren’t following us. Get up, now.”

“I didn’t expect even you to act like this, sir.”

But Team Leader Yong ignored my bloodshot eyes and peeled off a long strip of a dismantling marker.

“Team Leader!”

I knew he cared about Myeong Haebin.

But even so, wasn’t it going too far to treat an innocent minor who knew nothing as an anomaly?

He seized my arm with his powerful hand, then used the other to stick the marker onto Lee Seryeong’s slender arm.

The instant I tried to tear it off in irritation, goosebumps erupted all over my body.

It was so cold that it went beyond chilly and became painfully frigid, as though I were hugging a block of ice fresh from a freezer. That cold was emanating from Lee Seryeong, whom I was holding.

“...!”

Only then did I realize it.

How had I failed to notice her body temperature, which could not possibly belong to a human? Her bloodless face? The complete absence of a shadow beneath her feet?

I hastily released her, but my vision was suddenly flooded with white.

“What are you two doing?”

The flashlight held by the “teacher” was shining directly into my eyes.

“We were, um...”

Only then did I turn around, but Lee Seryeong, who had been holding on to me, had vanished without a trace.

“We just stepped out to use the restroom. Ha-ha... Should we return immediately?”

The “teacher’s” oppressive presence weighed down on my entire body, but Team Leader Yong gave him a friendly smile and attempted to talk our way out of it.

The teacher slowly approached, passed by us, and lifted the motionless teddy bear from the floor with the tip of one finger.

“So you were wasting your time on something pointless? During self-study, no less.”

The teacher extended his arm out into the hallway and dropped the teddy bear. The bear, which had been moving only moments ago, plummeted like an ordinary, lifeless object.

Why did the teddy bear that was viciously chasing us until just now...?

Ah. This was a game.

Sneaking out during evening self-study to play with an unauthorized item.

Wait. In that case, this was an activity unrelated to our studies.

Rule number three in the app.

[3. Activities unrelated to one’s studies are subject to disciplinary action.]

“Are we being disciplined?”

“You understand well. Both of you, follow me.”

As if he had issued an absolute command that had to be obeyed, our bodies moved on their own and followed the “teacher” as he turned and walked away.

“...I’m sorry.”

This was my fault.

I had lost all sense of reason and shouted, effectively drawing the teacher straight to us.

I could also guess how I had managed to come to my senses.

The dismantling markers weakened ghost stories as their effects accumulated. I had personally seen them used on the vending machine, the teacher, the eraser, and the cafeteria.

While I wasn’t paying attention, their effects must have quietly accumulated until they became powerful enough to snap me out of whatever influence the anomaly called Lee Seryeong had placed me under.

Of course, if I hadn’t regained my senses, Team Leader Yong probably would have torn me away from her by force.

This is so damn humiliating.

I had pretended that I could take care of myself and that I was perfectly fine, only to cause this much trouble.

Whether because he was conscious of the teacher or because he resented me, Team Leader Yong gave no reply.

What would happen if we continued following the teacher?

He had said both of you, so Haebin seemed to have escaped somehow in the meantime, but... damn it.

“Go inside.”

The “teacher” pushed us into the self-study room.

His sharp hands pressed down firmly on our shoulders, seating us side by side in the empty seats that had originally been ours.

“It seems neither of you knows how to remain properly attached to your desks.”

If there was one thing I had learned while surviving in this school, it was that you had to grovel before the “teacher.” As long as you did that, you could at least avoid the worst.

“I’m sorry.”

I quietly lowered my gaze like a student who had done something wrong, but the “teacher” bent down and whispered directly into my ear.

“There’s no need to apologize. You need only accept your punishment.”

The heavy lump of metal in the teacher’s hand gleamed.

Its coating had peeled away, leaving it as grotesque as a rusted blade. It looked more like an instrument of torture than an educational tool.

The “teacher” caught my wrist with his cold hand. With irresistible strength, he forced my hand flat onto the desk in the correct posture and pinned it in place.

Damn it. I don’t know what that is, but I have to pull my hand away...!

Before I could react, the enormous lump of metal descended from above my head.

Thunk!

The dull impact battered my eardrums. Perhaps the sudden shock had numbed my senses, because I made the fatal mistake of thinking, It doesn’t hurt as much as I expected.

That lasted only for a moment.

An agony so terrible that I couldn’t even scream spread from the back of my hand throughout my entire body.

A thick, crude metal staple protruding from the bottom of the device crushed through the skin and muscles on the back of my hand. As if that were not enough, it burrowed deeply into the hard desktop beneath it, fastening me firmly in place.

My right hand.

Then my left.

Wherever the metal device had struck, gray staples stained with my blood had been driven in, forming straight lines.

Only then did I realize what this monstrosity was.

It was a giant stapler, like the kind used to bind thick stacks of documents.

“You should begin by learning how to sit with proper posture.”

Team Leader Yong was not exempt from proper posture either.

Beyond the divider came the harsh snap of a spring, the sickening sound of metal staples piercing flesh, the stench of blood, and a barely suppressed groan mixed with ragged breathing.

Even after the “teacher” left, the backs of my hands burned so intensely that I couldn’t speak.

“...Team Leader.”

“If you’re about to apologize, don’t.”

Even though he was right beside me, his voice was barely audible.

“Isn’t that what rookies are like? It’s fine.”

Blood flowing from the backs of his hands ran across the desk and dripped slowly onto his knees, but Team Leader Yong leaned wearily against his chair and looked at me.

“You seemed to know, sir.”

That Lee Seryeong was an anomaly.

Thinking back, their reactions had been strange. They had been excessively cold toward her. Haebin in particular.

“I wasn’t certain. That thing gave us a clue too... and it really did look human. Well, I suppose it deliberately took that appearance to bewitch people.”

“You don’t have to cover for me that much.”

“When someone offers you an excuse, take it. You really are a coldhearted bastard.”

“Then was it also a lie that Lee Seryeong was the cause of One-Man Hide-and-Seek?”

“No one knows. But right now, she’s an anomaly. Tsk. Your mental state still isn’t great, is it?”

“No, sir. That’s not it. I was only curious.”

Even after ending up in this state, Team Leader Yong still managed a grin.

Sensation was gradually disappearing from my fingertips. Meanwhile, the teacher who had been patrolling the self-study room took a seat as if guarding the main entrance.

We needed to leave, but even if Myeong Haebin came looking for us, escaping in this condition seemed nearly impossible.

The staples had pierced through the desktop and were firmly pinning both my hands in place.

“Start getting ready to leave.”

“How? Were yours driven in less deeply?”

They were not merely embedded in our flesh. Like the staples from a real stapler, their ends appeared to be firmly curled around the underside of the desk.

How the hell was I supposed to prepare to leave?

“...Hup.”

Team Leader Yong drew in a breath.

The muscles around his bandaged wrist tensed, and then he wrenched his right hand free. Drops of blood scattered everywhere. A chunk of the desktop had been torn away with it and now dangled raggedly from his palm, still attached to the staple.

Did this man just tear it out by brute force?

That was the hand he had already injured, too.

Was he insane?

When he shook his hand, dark-red blood splattered everywhere, from the divider to the floor.

“The wood’s softer than I expected.”

At this rate, even if he died, people would probably call it death by natural causes.

Instead, he looked at me as though I were the strange one.

“What are you doing? Aren’t you leaving? Need help?”

“...This is your method?”

“Why?”

“Nothing.”

I must have thought that this was completely insane at least a thousand times, but I alone would have to bear the consequences.

Hanmu, you have to go home. Are you planning to stay here for the rest of your life?

I slowly curled my tingling fingers. As the staple pulled against my flesh, my palm throbbed with searing pain.

In one go.

I clenched my teeth until it felt as though my molars would shatter. Leaning my upper body backward, I jerked my right arm upward with all my strength.

Crack! Crunch!

The section of desktop fastening me in place tore free. The alien sensation of the staple piercing the back of my hand and scraping against bone made my vision flash white.

“Hah... Haa...!”

How the hell had he done this without even flinching?

I couldn’t believe my left hand was still pinned down.

Even in the middle of all this, I checked the teacher, but he still wasn’t looking in our direction.

I stared down at my violently trembling right hand.

Team Leader Yong had already freed his other hand and was using his teeth to open a bottle of painkillers he had pulled from his pocket.

“Finish it.”

Damn it.

By the time I finally pulled my left hand free, I couldn’t put any strength into either hand. They wouldn’t stop trembling from the pain, which felt as though every part of them had been slashed open.

“Ah.”

My mouth reflexively opened at Team Leader Yong’s casual utterance, and a rectangular pill landed inside. It was one of the painkillers he carried with him.

It seemed to have no coating, because the distinctive bitterness of a chemical mixture surged across my tongue. Hoping it would work even a little faster, I forced myself to chew and swallow it.

The pain, which I had thought no ordinary painkiller could possibly suppress, faded so quickly that I found myself wondering what kind of medicine it was.

It felt as though the very concept of sensation had been dulled.

“How is it?”

“...I think I’ll live.”

I wiped away the cold sweat obscuring my vision with the end of my sleeve. I immediately regretted it when I realized I had probably smeared blood over my face instead.

“Then let’s go.”

“Aren’t we pulling these out?”

“We’d probably bleed too much if we did. It’ll be uncomfortable, but bear with it.”

Moving my fingers felt unnatural, as though the muscles were stiff and catching against something. More importantly, the staples were rusted in several places. Looking at them made me wonder whether metal poisoning would become a problem before anything else.

All the more reason to get out of here.

What would happen if we were caught again?

Could I put myself through this madness another time?

Absolutely not.

Pain was even more frightening when you knew what it felt like.

I would not be caught again.

That resolve settled firmly inside me.

Unable to use my hands because of the metal staples embedded in them, I crawled along the floor using even my elbows. The moment we escaped the self-study room, I pressed my back against the wall and struggled to calm my ragged breathing.

“The security in the self-study room was far too lax. The teacher didn’t even look in our direction.”

“Wipe the drool from your mouth before you talk.”

Had I been drooling?

I tried wiping it away, but there was nothing there.

He tricked me.

Team Leader Yong snickered, then hooked his arm around mine and helped me up, as if signaling that it was time to leave.

“Either it’s confident it can catch us even if we escape, or that hide-and-seek game is the central element of this ghost story. Maybe both.”

Because One-Man Hide-and-Seek is the main event?

Come to think of it, the app didn’t simply tell me to clean up Hwaae High School.

It had specifically told me to clean up One-Man Hide-and-Seek.

If that was the main event, deliberately leaving gaps in the security made sense. Someone had to escape in order for the hide-and-seek game to begin.

Or, as Team Leader Yong had said, it could be both.

Supporting each other’s weight, we slipped through the hallways while avoiding the patrolling teachers and headed upstairs.

“This is where we were caught.”

“The teddy bear’s gone, and so is Haebin.”

If she had been struck by that enormous box cutter, there should at least have been a trail of blood. The absence of even that was good news.

“Senior! Mister!”

The moment we reached the practical training room, Myeong Haebin sprang out and threw her arms around us.

“Ow! My hands—my hands!”

“Ah! I didn’t see them. Ugh, that must really hurt.”

Only then did Myeong Haebin notice our condition. She immediately raised both hands and backed away.

“Did you see the teddy bear? It wasn’t there.”

“Neither did I. I checked downstairs, but it had disappeared. Still, just in case, I prepared some salt water.”

Myeong Haebin held up the plastic bottle I had drunk from earlier. It was now half-filled with salt water, which sloshed around as she shook it.

The hide-and-seek game could not have ended yet. The app had said so as well.

It would not end until everyone had been eliminated or the game had been properly concluded.

“But will that really work?”

The teddy bear had chased us as though it intended to kill us. Honestly, I found it difficult to believe that sprinkling a little salt water on it would be enough to end everything.

“Why do you think these things have specific countermeasures? Why do vampires burn to death in sunlight?”

“Vampires aren’t real.”

“You think they aren’t?”

“Mister, seriously! Stop messing with Senior!”

“Urgh...!”

Myeong Haebin jabbed Team Leader Yong hard in the side. He doubled over and staggered away weakly.

“Salt has traditionally been the bane of things like necromancy. You know how people say you should sprinkle salt on yourself after returning from a funeral? It’s like that. Of course, superstitions like that don’t actually work against real ghost stories—but it’s written in the rules of this particular game.”

That did seem to make some sense.

I wasn’t sure about salt, but none of the information we had discovered inside ghost stories so far had ever been false.

“Good. Then all that’s left is to find the teddy bear—”

Crackle.

White powder drifted down from the ceiling.

The instant I looked up with a terrible sense of foreboding, an entire ceiling tile shattered.

“Found you!”

The teddy bear, its entire body covered in dust, leaped down and drove the box cutter vertically toward us.

Wasn’t it supposed to move only through the hallways?

This was seriously unfair.

“...What?”