Chapter 6

Hwaae High School (2)

“The contents... changed.”

“Team Leader, did you see that just now?”

“Yeah. Now I understand why the higher-ups are giving him special treatment.”

All I had done was clean a noticeboard.

Feeling unnecessarily embarrassed, I rubbed beneath my nose, but their gazes were directed below the noticeboard rather than at it.

Wondering why they were looking there, I noticed that the space beneath the glass was strangely empty.

“Did you clean this up, Haebin?”

“Clean what?”

To clean the glass, I had sprayed it with cleaner and dragged the soapy water downward.

Of course, I had laid a towel beneath it, but the towel and floor should still have been soaked with the water and cleaner that leaked through.

So why... was the towel perfectly dry, without even a single water stain on the floor?

“Wow, how did you do that? I never imagined that ‘cleaning ghost stories’ worked like this.”

Jeong Dohyeon examined my window cleaner with genuine fascination, but I couldn’t answer him.

It’s different.

Come to think of it, what had I done with the lump I pulled out from between the drawers in that house? Had I ever changed the bucket of water after washing the bloodstained rags?

What am I?

Do I really have some kind of ability?

Ding-dong-dang-dong.

Just then, the distinctive electronic chime of a school bell rang out.

“It looks like class is over.”

Click, clack. Click, clack. Click, clack.

The corridor had been empty, but the unmistakable sound of dress shoes drew closer.

“A teacher.”

Before we could react to Team Leader Yong’s quiet warning, the “teacher” stopped in front of us.

The “teacher” had unnaturally long arms and legs. Its skin was a bloodless, bluish color, and it walked as though its limbs contained no joints whatsoever.

The only reason I recognized that grotesque figure as a teacher was because a sheet of paper bearing the word [TEACHER] had been nailed to its forehead, as though it were playing a role.

Instinctively, I knew we must neither speak nor move carelessly.

Students were supposed to respect their teachers.

I couldn’t move.

It bent down and looked once at the grandfather clock in the entrance hall, which had no eyelids, and then at the boundary between the entrance hall and the corridor. Slowly straightening its back, it looked at us.

—Improper attire. Students I’ve never seen before, are you? You have eight minutes left.

Click, clack. Click, clack. Click, clack.

That was all.

The “teacher” did nothing more and disappeared down the corridor.

“Phew. We barely survived. At least it doesn’t kill people the moment it sees them.”

Finally able to move again, Team Leader Yong craned his neck to glance down the corridor where the “teacher” had disappeared and breathed a sigh of relief.

“Why did it simply leave? Because the break isn’t over yet?”

“...Classes haven’t started yet.”

Myeong Haebin was mistaken. This wasn’t a break between classes.

The time was 8:52 a.m.

“High school classes begin at nine, so that was the warning bell.”

“You still remember things like that? Youth really is wonderful.”

The “teacher” had unmistakably looked at the boundary between the entrance hall and the corridor.

Did crossing that boundary count as arriving at school?

“So we have to enter the school before then....”

But why had it said our attire was improper?

My gaze fell upon the enormous mirror covering the entire wall opposite the noticeboard—and the words written above it.

“Rule Two said that we had to dress neatly in accordance with the regulations.”

“Senior, look at the floor over here. I think this might be it.”

Myeong Haebin, who had been wandering around with a bag of cleaning equipment nearly as large as she was, called me over and pointed at the floor.

[DRESS NEATLY IN YOUR SCHOOL UNIFORM]

It was written beside a round sticker shaped like a pair of shoes.

Right. How would you check whether your clothing was neat?

You would look in a mirror, wouldn’t you?

I strode onto the sticker. The moment I did, my reflection changed completely.

I was wearing a school shirt over a plain white T-shirt, with my necktie poking out of my pocket. I looked like a delinquent—a style I had never once worn in my life.

But only my reflection was dressed in a school uniform. In reality, I was still wearing my Daecheonmyeong uniform.

How am I supposed to fix this?

“Mr. Hanmu, what are you doing?”

“Oh, here. I think I need to straighten out the way I look in this mirror, but I don’t know how.”

Jeong Dohyeon stepped beside me, placing one foot on the edge of the sticker.

“Oh, you’re right. Is the problem that you can’t reach through the mirror?”

He thought for a moment while adjusting his clothes, then seemingly realized something and reached toward me.

“Mr. Hanmu, sometimes it helps to set aside common sense inside a ghost story.”

Speaking calmly and kindly, he grabbed the shirt on my reflection.

His hand should have passed through empty air, but instead, his fingers closed around stiff fabric and plastic buttons.

“Like this. See?”

As he moved his hand, the buttons fastened one by one as though he were straightening actual clothing.

It really worked.

“I’ll handle the rest my—ugh!”

But Jeong Dohyeon had already grabbed my necktie. He pulled the strap from behind, lightly constricting my throat.

“I hope you survive for a long time, Mr. Hanmu. At Daecheonmyeong, that’s considered a compliment.”

It felt as though he had deliberately tightened it just now.

Was I imagining things?

As though proving it had been nothing but my imagination, Jeong Dohyeon gave me an innocent, good-natured smile. He then neatly adjusted his own clothes and called the others over.

“Team Leader, Haebin. I think we found it.”

Perhaps I had been staring at him too intently, because Team Leader Yong—now dressed neatly himself—poked his head over Jeong Dohyeon’s shoulder.

“Newbie, why are you making that face?”

“It’s nothing.”

It was probably no big deal. Anyone could make a mistake while tying a necktie that wasn’t actually visible.

The clock had just reached 8:59, so I moved away from him and cautiously crossed the entrance hall’s boundary.

Nothing happened.

For now, we had succeeded.

“It’ll be nine soon. Let’s move quickly.”

I didn’t want to encounter that “teacher” again.

The others must have felt the same way, because we hurried up the central staircase.

Jeong Dohyeon took the lead.

“The classrooms should begin on the second floor. Let’s enter the nearest one.”

“Aren’t you going first, Team Leader?”

“Hey, I’m too valuable for that. I’m the brains, and he’s the muscle. Got it?”

It made sense. In an unknown place like this, the person in front naturally faced the greatest danger.

Still, wasn’t the team leader usually supposed to go first?

Not that I wanted to say anything.

What if they made me take the lead instead? No, thank you.

Just then—

Ding-dong-dang-dong.

The bell rang, and as though on cue, the commotion throughout the school died away.

We stopped walking as well.

—Why aren’t you in your classrooms?

The “teacher” was standing in the second-floor corridor.

An unidentified liquid trickled from the nail driven into its forehead.

Just like before, I couldn’t move.

Wasn’t that only natural? How could a student dare run away when a teacher was speaking to them?

Click, clack. Click, clack.

The “teacher” approached.

Its gray lips, grotesquely twisted to one side, moved.

—Ah, your ears were too small to hear the bell.

It raised a hand resembling a pair of scissors toward Jeong Dohyeon, who stood at the front of our group.

In an absurdly gentle voice, the “teacher” soothed him.

—It’s all right. Your teacher will help you hear better.

Before anyone could stop it, the wide-open scissors snapped shut.

Snip.

Jeong Dohyeon’s ear was severed.

“Urgh...!”

His scream rang sharply through the silent corridor. His bloodstained ear bounced down the stairs, tumbling from step to step.

The “teacher” pulled a large gray ear from its pocket and pressed it against the empty space. Then it prepared to drive in a needle threaded with red string.

This was the fault of a student who had failed to hear the bell.

The teacher was merely trying to help a deficient student.

Bzzzt.

The phone in my pocket vibrated.

At the same moment, my mind snapped back into focus.

“Teacher!”

The call came out as a shrill cry so unlike my own voice that I could hardly believe it had come from me.

The needle stopped.

Only the creature’s head turned toward me.

—What is it?

Only after meeting those two eyes, their entire round shapes completely exposed, did regret wash over me.

They said keeping quiet would at least keep you out of half the trouble.

—Surely you aren’t making fun of your teacher?

It slowly approached me. Whenever its hand moved, the scissor blades stained with Jeong Dohyeon’s blood scraped together with a metallic sound.

My heart was pounding so violently that my chest hurt, but now that it was closer, I could be certain of one thing.

This “teacher” was capable of communication.

Instead of completely ignoring me, it had answered when I called and even prompted me when I failed to respond.

What I said next was the most important thing of all.

“We didn’t know that was the bell signaling the start of class.”

A long silence filled the air.

Damn it. That wasn’t what I had meant to say first.

I should have practiced speaking more often.

—Ah, I see.

—It appears the problem isn’t with your ears but inside your head. Isn’t that right?

The “teacher’s” fingertips drew together, becoming long and sharp.

Just before those points—sharp enough to draw blood with the slightest touch—could plunge into my ear canal, I finally blurted out what I had managed to organize in my head.

“We’re transfer students. We didn’t know where to go, so we were looking for a teacher.”

The “teacher” froze as though someone had pressed a pause button.

—Transfer students?

“...Yes. This is the first time you’ve seen us too, isn’t it?”

That wasn’t merely a guess.

Although the school treated us as “students,” when we first encountered it downstairs, it had unmistakably said that we were students it had never seen before.

If a teacher had never seen certain students, there was a good chance they were transfers. And it wasn’t unusual for transfer students to know little about their new school.

The “teacher” slowly tilted its head.

—Ah.

It was only a single word, but I could feel its razor-sharp murderous intent subside.

Four name tags dropped from the teacher’s outstretched hand.

One yellow, one blue, and two green.

—I’ll give you five more minutes.

Instinctively, I knew this was our final chance.

As the teacher moved away, the unnatural pressure constricting my body weakened.

“You’ve really got guts, Senior. How could you even think of lying so shamelessly right in front of that thing?”

“Hey, Dohyeon. Is it gone?”

I couldn’t take my eyes off Jeong Dohyeon.

The look on his face earlier suggested that he had anticipated what would happen. It wasn’t the face of someone who regretted his actions.

What he did next was utterly unpredictable.

After glancing toward the path the teacher had taken, Jeong Dohyeon forcibly ripped the lump of gray flesh from the side of his head.

Crunch.

Fresh blood erupted from the ear that was already drenched in it. The blood vessels along the attached surface writhed as though still alive.

“Are you all right?”

He pressed a handkerchief firmly against the empty space where his ear had been and met my gaze.

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

“You nearly died just now....”

If I had been even slightly slower, that enormous needle might have pierced his temple and left him like the corpse in the entrance hall.

But the three of them looked at me as though I were the strange one.

“But he didn’t die. And he seems perfectly sound of mind.”

“What, did you expect him to walk around with an ear that was forcibly attached to him?”

Without the slightest concern, Jeong Dohyeon took the name tags from Team Leader Yong’s hand and passed mine to me.

“Get used to it.”

We were inside a ghost story.

One wrong step could kill us, and we could even alter our reflections in a mirror.

So... yes. Perhaps I really did need to get used to it.

“If you’re going to fight, take it outside. That way I can at least place a bet.”

“Mister, is this really the time for jokes?”

“I’m telling you that if you’re going to die, do it outside. Time’s running out.”

“We’re not fighting.”

I needed to stop thinking about it. If the teacher returned, we really would die like dogs.

Only then did I turn over the name tag in my hand.

“I’m in Class 1 of the second year.”

The name tag had a sky-blue background and read:

Kim Hanmu, Year 2, Class 1.

Wait.

Hadn’t there been one yellow tag, one blue tag, and two green ones?

“Damn. Of all the ways we could’ve been split up, it had to be like this.”

Jeong Dohyeon’s tag read Year 1, Class 3. Myeong Haebin and Team Leader Yong both had green tags, which apparently made them third-year students.

Fuck.

I was already scared out of my mind, and now I had been separated from everyone else.