We Are Prepared
Most of the students and staff had died of poisoning.
Which meant the remainder hadn't. So how had the rest of them died?
『Oh? What did you see that tipped you off, Teacher?』
Instead of facing the front door that ghost of a girl was marking, I bolted for the back door at a dead sprint.
CRASH! Clatter!
Sorry, dead students — I shoved desks over wholesale and hurled anything my hands could grab.
『Ah! Teacher, is this how you treat your students?』
"And is this how students treat their teachers?"
Damn it.
Whether it was her youth or her lightness, the girl was one step closer to the back door. Trapped in the classroom like a rat in a cage, darting uselessly between the two doors, I waited for my opening and threw myself through the front one.
Thud!
"Ghk—!"
『Oh.』
Two things happened at once: she closed the distance to the front door with startling speed and drove an awl she'd been hiding inside her blouse sleeve into my shoulder — and I, accepting the trade, leveled the box cutter I'd swiped from a pencil case dead against her carotid artery.
This was the moment my little brother's... no, B's instruction — strike here in one motion — paid off in full.
『Teacher. Are you capable of it?』
"What?"
『Are you ready to kill me?』
A hollow laugh burst out of me.
"Of course I am."
In a labyrinth, being ready to die is not enough. All that gets you is death.
You have to be ready to kill.
That's the only way you walk out alive.
"What about you? Are you ready? To die."
The blade's tip burrowed shallowly into the dark glyphs beneath her skin.
『My apologies. I surrender. I'm surrendering, ma'am.』
Holding both her wrists with one hand, I pulled the awl out of my shoulder with the other, then unbuckled a belt from one of the dead students.
『Haha. You're not quite right in the head either, Teacher. Who knew.』
The abnormal student surrendered her limbs to the belt without a fight, murmuring the words as I tied her up.
My left sleeve was growing clammy and wet.
Given the situation, treatment would have to wait.
"Why are you doing this? What would make you stop? Is there something else you're hiding? If this doesn't work, will you set off a bomb or something?"
『Teacher. Why would there be a bomb at school...』
Even without seeing her face, I could feel her looking at me like I was pathetic.
『If I had a bomb big enough to kill the whole student body, do you think I'd waste it on a school? I'd set it off somewhere bigger. Obviously.』
"What?"
『Oh, right. Who did you have lunch with? The teachers who didn't eat the school lunch — who were they?』
She clearly intended to find out, hunt them down, and kill every last one.
Every living student and staff member.
Just like the article said.
I couldn't tell whether the phone missing from my pocket was another of the labyrinth's tricks, or if I'd simply left it in the staff office.
Either way, I needed to get down to the second floor.
『Where are you going?』
I grabbed the student by the nape and forced her around in front of me.
Thump.
We had barely stumbled back out into the corridor when—
Like a broken television switching channels, my vision inverted again, and a hallucinatory scene bloomed before me.
A gray corridor empty of every living soul.
Splash, splash — red floodwater risen to the ankles.
Dark human silhouettes raining down past the windows.
A faint singing drifting from the stairwell at the corridor's end.
Footsteps stamping along to a light, cheerful hum.
『You really should watch where your attention wanders, Teacher.』
Smack!
"Ah—ghk—!"
A violent yank, and I crumpled onto the stair landing where I stood.
『You should get some exercise.』
Then, using the fact that I was clinging to her with everything I had, the student deliberately wrenched her whole body around and fell with me — landing safely.
Using the teacher's body as a cushion.
"Ugh...."
I thought my insides had burst.
As if being jammed against the hard edge of the stairs hadn't already left me aching all over.
It was only because the staircase was short that I'd survived. Any more momentum and I'd have snapped my neck and died right there.
"Ha... shit."
Just as I struggled up against the wall, my ankle declared a strike.
Seriously, this kid.
"You...!"
Standing somehow even on her bound legs, the student looked down at me.
A nameless anxiety welled up, and I stared back up at her in silence.
Crack. Crick-pop.
A hideous sound came from behind her back.
『Ta-da! Amazing, right! Just like magic!』
Both slender arms, tied behind her a moment ago, swung free before my eyes.
Her thumbs.
She'd broken her own thumbs to slip the restraints. Without a flicker of hesitation.
『You asked me earlier, didn't you? Whether I was ready to die.』
Only now did I understand.
『How could I kill people if I weren't ready to die myself? We're ready. We have been for a very, very long time.』
That girl could no longer be called human.
And yet, inexplicably, that labyrinth of hers terrified me to the marrow—
—and filled me with pity.
『You I'll save for the very end, Teacher! See you soon!』
The girl skipped back up the stairs on light, springing steps and vanished.
Gritting my teeth, I hauled myself upright and seized the stair rail.
...Wait a second.
A cold clarity cut through my chest.
We were ready, she'd said?
Not just the one girl?
Ignoring the screams pouring out of every joint in my body and every circuit of my brain, I made it down to the second floor — and the moment I arrived, I spotted someone standing in the distance in front of the staff office, and I screamed too.
"Yu Hyeonjae!"
Panic wrung his name straight out of my mouth.
The faculty member recognized as Yu Hyeonjae, and the male student gripping him, both snapped their heads toward me.
"Get away from him!"
The boy might be innocent, but after what that girl had just done, letting my guard down was unthinkable.
For now, I had to assume everyone except me and Yu Hyeonjae was an enemy.
"Some of the survivors are the killers! They're trying to kill everyone else!"
At those words, Yu Hyeonjae slowly turned his head back to look down at the boy — and the instant their eyes met, the boy lunged at him as if that were the starting gun.
Thwack!
Yu Hyeonjae leaned back a fraction and kicked the boy without an ounce of mercy.
The boy's head cracked against the wall and he wobbled — and in that gap, the CEO of Yuwi Guild broke into a run toward me.
"No, not toward me — you're supposed to tie him—!"
Ah. If only I hadn't sprained my ankle.
"Mr. Seon Yuhan. In here, quickly."
Yu Hyeonjae supported me into the teachers' lounge right next door and hastily locked the door behind us.
"Where were you? I was on the third floor when I ran into a female student — I think she's one of the killers. It seems they're targeting everyone who skipped the school lunch and survived."
"I was in the infirmary. It's right beside the staff office, so I checked — the teachers were dead, and every landline cable had been cut. The bag they collected our phones into is gone, too."
Needlessly meticulous, all of it.
"Their goal is what we saw in the article: the entire student body, the entire faculty, dead. So for us — the ones who came here to 'edit' that—"
BANG-bang! CRACK, WHAM!
『▓▓▓ Teacherrr, ▓▓▓ teacherrr. No, wait. Mr. Yu Hyeonjae...? Mr. Seon Yuhan...? I have so many questions. Won't you come out for just a moment?』
A soft, lilting string of sentences slid through the gap of the lounge door, which shook as if it might break apart.
"So we have to survive them."
"Yes. In a way, it's just an ordinary... labyrinth."
Not some portentous maze about events that might one day come to pass.
A thoroughly ordinary labyrinth — one that, true to its invasive type, used a real-world space as its stage, and whose monsters merely wore human shapes.
『What are you two whispering about so happily in there...? Tell me too. I'm bored as well.』
Clunk!
While I improvised treatment for the awl wound in my shoulder and gauged whether the security bars on the window could be pried off, the boy's whispering sentences kept seeping in under the door.
『Come out and play with me. Mr. Yu Hyeonjae. Hiding isn't any fun, you know. Mr. Seon Yuhan.』
Clunk.
『Come out.』
Clunk....
『Come. Out.』
Clunkclunkclunkclunkclunkclunkclunkclunkclunkclunkclunkclunkclunkclunkclunkclunkclunkclunkclunkclunkclunkclunkclunkclunkclunkclunkclunkclunkclunkclunkclunkclunkclunkclunk
『▓▓▓. What are you doing in there?』
The door-rattling din cut off — so abruptly it chilled my spine.
Damn it.
She'd arrived too.
『The school nurse and the chaplain are in there. You know their names?』
『No.』
『They say it's Yu Hyeonjae and Seon Yuhan.』
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
『We don't have any teachers by those names at our school.』
『Exactly. Isn't that strange? Makes you curious. So we're politely asking you to come out right away.』
Clunk.
Polite, my foot — it was the sound of someone shoving against a locked door.
『Fine. Let's leave them for now.』
You save the tastiest things for last, after all — the little murmured sentence faded away, trembling faintly with laughter still clinging to it.
『See you soon, teachers. We're going to go meet some friends first.』
Tap....
Two sets of footsteps receded, farther and farther.
"What do we do? Those bars don't look like they'll come off anytime soon. Jumping out the window is out of the question, I'd say."
Yu Hyeonjae's gaze flicked briefly toward my ankle.
"How about you leave the school first, sir? If even one person makes it out alive, the article might be judged as edited."
"And if not? If you have to leave too, Mr. Seon Yuhan?"
He had a point.
"Then shall we head for the main entrance on the first floor together?"
"They'll have done something to the main entrance as well. Knowing those children's temperament. Or at the very least, they'll have laid a trap and be waiting."
That was also fair.
Given the deftness with which they'd cut every phone line and disposed of our phones to cut off contact with the outside—
"Ah. The fire alarm."
"Pardon?"
"If we trigger the alarm from the fire box, it automatically notifies the nearest fire station."
"So we hold out until help arrives from outside."
"Yes. They usually arrive within ten minutes, so our odds are good."
That was how you set a limit — a point in time you had to survive until.
You couldn't just run blind, with no beginning and no end.
"Though, Mr. Seon Yuhan."
We'd thrown together a slapdash strategy that was nine parts improvisation, and just as I moved to leave the lounge, Yu Hyeonjae spoke as he undid the lock.
"Keep in mind that 'the entire student body' includes those children. Those children are—"
"I know."
That they were ready to die.
"Do you truly know? People like that will do anything. Truly. Anything at all."
"Yes. I know."
And that I was the same.
"Good. Then let's—"
Click.
At last, the lock gave way.
"Let's go."
Creeeak.
The door swung open.
『Teachers — coming out now, are you?』
Along with sentences that came drifting up the stairwell from far, far below.