I saw the student.
A teenager with bleached hair and piercings.
A being from a high school ghost story that can be entered through a new moon dream, one that kills people when not being watched and freezes when it is.
But if you just figure out the method, one you can communicate with in an intelligent and emotional way…
'They're people.'
The high school students trapped in Segwang Metropolitan City.
My mind went dizzy.
Then does that mean all those entities that die miserably at the hands of Daydream employees and Disaster Management Bureau agents every new moon are…
'....'
I placed a hand on my school uniform.
My state, Contaminated by Sekwang Technical High School, was bizarrely unable to break its mold, as if captivated by something, instead of feeling a chilling horror.
Basically, in a state of emptiness unless anger is triggered.
It was a relief.
That this dizziness was lessened.
And that I could continue asking questions.
How are you moving right now?
All the other kids are lying on the floor.
But then.
It's because of you.
Because of me?
Yeah.
The ill-tempered student who had glanced at me frowned and wrote on the paper.
You moved me to the Infirmary.
Ever since then, even when it's not the graduation ceremony,
I've been waking up.
'…!'
I had moved this classmate to an empty bed in the Infirmary to get him treated.
And I had borrowed his uniform…
'That had an effect.'
Was it because this was a mechanism that wasn't in the 'In the Dark Shadow' game? Or did a loophole appear when the invading error was officially enrolled as a student?
…Wait.
Are you the only one who can move?
There might have been more.
But right now, it's just me.
There were some empty spots
among the kids lying on the floor.
Were those the spots for the kids who could move?
Maybe.
Sometimes there's graffiti left by kids
in the library.
Names and stuff.
After the graduation ceremony started,
have you seen those kids?
The delinquent-looking classmate calmly wrote down his response.
No.
When the graduation ceremony starts,
kids like that are corpses in the auditorium.
'....'
They had been devoured by Hanbit Library.
The kids who couldn't leave the library wandered around, searching for nonexistent clues, until they were caught for some kind of wrongful rule violation. So many of them…
A pang shot through my chest.
A strange pain, as if a close friend had been brutally murdered. As if sharing hatred and inciting aggression.
The feeling of mourning shared by the students of Sekwang Technical High School.
'No.'
I tried not to get swept away, and after a deep breath, I asked a fundamental question.
Why did this school become like this?
I don't know.
If I knew, do you think I'd still be here?
Any suspicions,
or anything strange is fine.
Before it became like this,
were there any signs?
I don't know.
All I remember is coming to school the day before the graduation ceremony.
And then some… I don't know.
I just fell asleep after class started,
and when I came to, it was the middle of the night,
and the graduation ceremony was happening.
And the teacher who turned into a monster
kills all the kids.
That just keeps repeating.
The classmate's eyes were sunken and dark.
A calmness and weary resignation that was hard to believe for a high schooler with a rebellious Exterior were deeply ingrained in them.
This will all be forgotten
once the graduation ceremony starts again anyway.
....
You don't remember it at all?
That you're trapped here and can't get out.
I remember that it repeats.
That's it.
He pressed down hard as he wrote.
So, transfer student.
Just leave.
His gaze turned to the library book I was holding.
Looks like you found that book too.
Nothing changes no matter how many times you read it.
Things that change.
....
Wait a minute.
Do you happen to know that I conducted
the graduation ceremony differently before?
I killed the teacher.
What?
Think carefully.
After the graduation ceremony where I appeared,
were there any other changes?
The student's pupils widened slightly.
As if comparing the experiences of past graduation ceremonies.
As if remembering.
And then…
There is.
'…!'
The teacher leaves the auditorium faster.
The teacher.
-To give Penalty Points to the students who did not attend, the teacher will now depart from the auditorium.
A monster made from the stitched-together upper bodies and organs of this school's various teachers. A being like a malevolent spirit from the final chapter of a horror game.
That being comes out faster?
'If anything, that's a bad sign.'
As I swallowed my saliva.
And…
And?
This might just be a coincidence, but
since then, it has never once
come into the Infirmary.
'…!!'
'The teacher doesn't enter the Infirmary.'
And the Infirmary… is the only place with a window leading to the backyard.
'....'
Wait.
By any chance, does that teacher
have something like a slip of paper?
A slip of paper?
Like a library checkout card!
It's torn in half,
and it has something like a Talisman drawn on it.
I've never checked.
The classmate met my eyes.
If you want,
I can check right now.
The teachers are around the auditorium.
....
Let's do it.
Please.
Alright.
Follow me.
And the classmate got up from the Infirmary floor…
Thud.
A Black Silhouette pinned the classmate down.
'…!'
I reflexively moved to attack the silhouette before I realized.
'It's the Wolf Leader.'
Right.
The Wolf Leader… looks like a Black Silhouette.
Like a shadow.
The disgust or violent impulse I felt when seeing explorers who had entered the school by error on the new moon didn't surge up.
It just felt like something alien.
Something dangerous.
Something from the outside.
Something I couldn't communicate with…
'So this is why he tried to run away.'
No, running away is the natural thing to do.
I suppressed the unconscious instinct to momentarily avoid the black thing I presumed to be the Wolf Leader, and I unfolded the paper with our conversation on it to show him.
Then I added a single sentence.
We are going to explore the area around the auditorium.
It is a dangerous location
that requires caution.
At that, the silhouette holding the classmate vanished.
'Hoo.'
As the classmate and I walked out of the Infirmary, the Black Silhouette followed behind us…
'....'
We slowly climbed the stairs toward the fifth floor.
Upon entering the fourth floor, quite a few empty spaces could be seen among the third-year Seonbaes displayed on the floor.
The classmate stepped forward as if used to it, but I endured the sharp pain in my chest and stepped onto the stairs again. To the fifth floor.
And then.
[Oh, my goodness.]
The moment I set foot on the fifth floor.
I realized why my classmate had referred to them as 'teachers' in the plural.
[It's quite aesthetic.]
What was displayed on the fifth-floor floor were not students.
Adults.
And if there was a group in this school with the Exterior of an adult, there was only one.
They're the teachers.
…The teachers.
And they were not in as pristine a condition as the students.
'....'
Melted upper bodies and various organs.
Bizarre human forms with faces half-melted or emaciated, in states where survival would be impossible, were laid neatly on the floor with their eyes open…
As if they had been separated from the 'teacher' mass and put in storage.
Among them were teachers who were nothing more than a single, unidentifiable piece of flesh, an eye, a clump of hair, or just entrails.
…As a student of Sekwang High School, instead of nausea, fear and sadness surged within me.
Do they ever wake up?
No.
They don't even lift off the floor.
And then I noticed.
'They're holding hands…'
All the human forms that still had hands were holding them tightly.
As if bracing against something.
'....'
The fifth floor was the same bizarre sight covered in flesh and Talismans as I had seen last time, but the flesh seemed to have lost its vitality, its mucus dried up, looking like a mummy's throat.
The Talismans…
Looking at their shape, I was certain.
'It's that Talisman.'
The bottom of the broken glass lantern buried in the backyard. The other torn half of the Talisman there.
It was as if its complete form was being projected here.
I reached out for one of the Talismans.
If a properly trained and employed agent of the Disaster Management Bureau had been here, they might have been able to decipher the Talisman's meaning, but I finally knew only its complete shape.
A mutated Chinese character in calligraphy.
Protect
The character for 'protect.''
[Hmm. Isn't that a somewhat familiar character, Mr. Roe Deer?]
...!
I remember.
-Something that had been covering my body spilled onto the floor.
-They were transparent spheres that looked like they could be loaded into a glass hand cannon.
-This is the clear reward for the game's final chapter!
Glass spheres engraved with the same character.
The moment I woke up after killing the teacher, proceeding with the graduation ceremony, and clearing 'In the Dark Shadow' with an A-rank.
The clear reward items scattered on the bed.
'....'
That means…
'They really were meant to be loaded into a glass hand cannon…!'
It was surely a possession of the agents who had buried the glass lantern in this school and tried to protect the students. No, at the very least, it had to be related.
And the fact that it was given as a reward to the one who cleared this ghost story in a 'way that saved the students' and came out to the outside world…
....
'Could it be necessary for rescuing the students?'
I have to check.
I need to get out and talk to the agents.
'Of course, for now, the goal is to collect all the clues I can and escape.'
I made a plan for the future, took another deep breath, and surveyed the fifth floor once more.
And I saw it.
'…That.'
At the far end of the dim fifth floor.
The auditorium door.
Hanging in front of those heavy double doors, which were shut tight and messy with handprints and bloodstains, was another human form.
Its arms pulled taut by flesh.
A bizarre human form with only its upper body remaining.
'It's not a student.'
The clothes were clearly not a school uniform.
But the distance made it difficult to identify the attire…
Could that be a teacher too?
I don't know.
We can't go in to check.
You can't go in?
Wondering if it was because of some sense of foreboding, I took a step, cautiously trying to tread on the dried flesh of the fifth floor.
But in that moment.
'…!'
An immense repulsion sent a jolt through my body.
'What the.'
I immediately realized the source of that repulsion, too.
'…The Talismans.'
The Talismans plastered all over the fifth-floor walls, forming a pattern, were preventing students from coming to the fifth floor.
'....'
I backed away.
I don't see any slips of paper
on the teachers.
Glancing past the fifth floor, the rebellious-looking classmate scribbled on the paper.
If that thing over there is also a teacher,
I'll check during the graduation ceremony.
Then he hesitated.
As if realizing once again that once the graduation ceremony started, he wouldn't remember this moment from the time the 'In the Dark Shadow' ghost story activated.
I replied carefully.
Then could you write it on your palm?
My palm?
Yeah.
If you write it down, it might still be there
when you wake up on graduation day.
He looked down at his own palm.
You might get curious
and take a look, don't you think?
Okay.
The classmate agreed with surprising speed.
He seemed a little excited, but that expression quickly vanished.
As if he didn't want to get his hopes up.
'....'
And he wrote nonchalantly on the paper.
You're not really a transfer student, are you?
That's right.
Why did you come to our school?
The question, while seeming to have abandoned all hope, carried a strange nuance.
An awareness of the probability that I might say I came to rescue them.
'....'
Honestly, I don't know.
I just ended up here
somehow in a dream.
I could feel his incredulous stare.
Still, I'll do what I can
to figure out the reason for this situation
and get rid of it.
As an honorary Sekwang citizen.
I tapped the uniform I was wearing.
You lent me your uniform, after all.
The classmate let out a silent, deflating laugh.
Whatever.
And he asked.
By the way,
what's your name?
....
Saying one's real name in a ghost story is against the rules.
But.
'Sekwang Technical High School is a place where you already have to write your name to enter.'
And building trust with this student, who can remain awake alone, will likely play an important role in unraveling the related secrets ahead.
I wrote it down.
It's Kim Soleum.
What a weird name.
What's your name?
You saw my name tag.
Lee Gyeol.
Year 1, Class 4.
Right.
Lee Gyeol, it's nice to meet you.
And so, Lee Gyeol and I formally introduced ourselves.
After we returned to the Infirmary.
I pushed the revived Contamination from my heart tattoo back in, returning to my original form.
"Hoo."
Even if I look like a Black Silhouette to you,
can we keep communicating like this with paper?
As he had affirmed, the student was glaring at me expressionlessly, but he didn't attack or run away.
And the Wolf Leader had changed from a Black Silhouette back to his complete form as a member of our party.
"I've read the whole Q&A. You asked your questions calmly and well. It seems a special situation occurs in this Darkness on the new moon. Care to explain?"
"…Yes."
And he also heard a reasonably detailed explanation about 'Sekwang Technical High School' from me.
But the thing he was most interested in was probably this.
The fact that I had suddenly transformed into a resident of a high school ghost story.
"You use an interesting method. You're using Contamination, aren't you?"
"...."
"I knew our company would advance in that direction."
The eyes behind the Wolf Leader's mask scanned me.
Then he stroked his chin.
"Still, progress is progress compared to now. Currently, it's a kind of chicken race."
"…You mean, whether you get Contaminated before you get a Wish Token, or get the Wish Token first?"
"Yes. Clever Employee Yong."
The mouth beneath the Wolf Mask drew an arc.
"Of course, the resourceful ones manage it privately within those confines."
"...."
Including himself, I'm sure.
"Now. Shall we return to the library? That student seems to know the way, so asking him for directions should make our escape easier."
"...Yes."
I asked Lee Gyeol for the way to another section of the library.
To be precise, the way to the section where
This way.
Walking behind our fortunately willing guide, we learned how to get to another section of Hanbit Library through the school's library…
"It's a rather intuitive method, isn't it?"
"…Yes."
And then, a question suddenly popped into my head.
What is the Wolf Leader's wish?
He's a being who is aware enough of the Wish Token to call it a chicken race. If I ask now, I might get an answer…
But asking this being that question somehow felt like a discourtesy to the Security Chief.
So I kept my mouth shut and walked quietly.
And finally, we returned to the very spot where we had started.
The passageway of bookshelves, where three strands of Yarn were now twisted together.
The section of Hanbit Library where
And so, the moment I bent down to check the empty space on the shelf.
"Now, to put the book back…"
My mouth was covered.
"Shh."
"…!"
The Wolf Leader pulled me and instantly ducked around the corner of that section, hiding behind a bookshelf.
…He wrote letters on my back with his finger.
-Another entity is coming.
"…!"
And then.
From the opposite corner, someone began to appear.
"...!!"
I stared blankly at the figure. It was…
"This is… where the Yarn is thickest..."
The Security Chief.
And…
Well done.
The Golden Mascot.
Me.