Publish the Article, Then Leave
A squeeze.
Riiiiiing―!
The alarm shrieked mercilessly against my eardrums.
『Please wait just a moment! I'll be right up!』
A student's sentence faintly cut through the blare of the alarm.
"Let's go up."
First, I yanked the hose from the fire hydrant and took it with me. The plan was to climb to the third floor—high enough that there'd be no security bars on the windows—then climb down the hose.
"Ugh……."
I limped up the stairs as fast as my body would allow. It wasn't my ankle that was wrecked, but if I couldn't stomach this and started whimpering, I might end up caught and killed.
Tap, clatter…….
From a step ahead, I could hear Yu Hyeonjae—whose legs were perfectly fine—scouting the third floor and slipping into the nearest classroom.
『Ugh…….』
The moment I reached the third-floor corridor behind him, a small sentence drifted out from a classroom far down the hall.
『S-Save…… me…….』
I could see someone crawling halfway out of the classroom door.
A girl with a bob haircut, wearing a gym uniform.
Her appearance was nothing like that first girl with the long hair and the school blazer.
Was she an innocent survivor, lucky enough to make it this far?
Or the third killer?
『Mom…….』
As the student coughed, black blood pattered down onto the floor.
"CEO Seon, quickly—!"
Yu Hyeonjae, who had tied the hose to the window, came out of the classroom and grabbed me, trying to support me.
"Sir, over there……."
『Please…… help me…….』
Yu Hyeonjae looked where I was pointing and stopped for a moment. He seemed to be wrestling with the exact same dilemma I was.
"Is there any chance there's a condition like we have to save at least one student, not just staff?" I whispered to him.
"It's…… not entirely impossible."
The co-CEO of Yuwi Guild wiped a dry hand across his face.
"Then let's do this. I'll bring that child up, so you go down the hose right now, CEO Seon. Immediately."
It was such a cold, heavy command that I found myself nodding before I could think. After all, with my ankle wrecked, I was nothing but dead weight.
I split off from Yu Hyeonjae right away and staggered, hunched, toward the window inside the classroom.
Swhoosh.
A short, deep breath—and just as I gripped the hose and swung my body out over the sill—
Tap.
I heard someone's hand seize the classroom door.
"Ah, sir……."
The student was standing at the door.
That girl with the bobbed hair and the gym uniform, the one who had been bleeding and crawling along the floor.
Alone.
『You two can't recognize people's faces and voices, can you? You seriously think I'm a different person?』
Yu Hyeonjae had been played.
『Teacher, what exactly are you?』
"……You're the kid from before."
『Yes! That's me!』
When the girl waved, her broken thumb flopped along helplessly.
『I met up with my friends and got a haircut and changed clothes. At first I wasn't sure it'd work, but I really didn't expect you two to be this blind.』
Should I stall for more time like this until the firefighters arrived?
Or should I turn my back and run down right now?
"You thought something was off from the start? Like what?" I tried to keep the conversation going, my body braced against the outer wall, the hose clamped in my white-knuckled grip.
『Well, for one, you never once called my name. You never even asked why I was wearing someone else's uniform—even though you clearly saw my name tag.』
The student drifted one slow, dancing step closer.
『You couldn't hold my eyes, either.』
Another step.
『Honestly, all I had to do was watch the way you looked at me and I knew. You're a completely different person from the arborvitae tree I've always known. She…… hmm, no. I have to protect her honor…… aigo.』
Whap!
The moment the student took one more step closer, they planted one foot against the outer wall and flattened themselves like a rock climber.
『▓▓▓―! Teacher Seon Yuhan, go out the window! Class 2-5!』
Then they tucked their body back inside the window frame. Maybe the broken thumb made gripping the hose too hard—either way, they had no intention of climbing down after me.
Tap.
My foot found the flowerbed, and a beat later, the mannequin's foot touched down as well—
and from far away, I could faintly hear a siren.
Almost there. All I had to do was hold out another minute or two.
There was no way I could run fast on this leg, so I needed somewhere to hide. Surely the cafeteria was over that way……
KU-GUNG, KRACK!
A sudden crash made me whip my head around, and through the main gate I saw a dark figure.
The male student.
As expected, they'd barricaded the exit with everything heavy they could find—the grandfather clock, desks, every piece of furniture in the building.
I cut around the side of the building to keep myself out of sight.
KWAK, click.
Between the growing wail of the siren, I could hear the main gate's lock disengaging.
『Teacherrrr. I heard you hurt your ankle? Don't push yourself too hard, now…….』
The student's sentence carried around the corner.
"Hah……."
I clamped a hand over my mouth and dragged in air.
『Why are you trying so hard? I'm not going to hurt you…… I'll let you go nice and easy. As long as you answer our questions honestly. Okay? I promise.』
My whole body was drenched in sweat.
Even as I ran on an ankle that should not have been moving at all, I had to smother every sound so my position stayed hidden.
Step, step.
The sound of dirt-caked feet on the asphalt was drawing closer and closer.
So were the sirens.
Which would come first—the firefighters entering the school, or that student's hands closing around me?
The cafeteria was too far. I'd be caught before I ever reached it.
In the end, I pressed my back flat against the wall at the rear of the school and drew the box cutter.
The only answer left was an ambush.
……I hadn't wanted it to come to this. Being ready to kill didn't mean I wanted to kill.
『Teacher Seon Yuhaaanim.』
Before I knew it, the student's sentence had slipped past right beside me. They were passing along the side of the building. The long shadow stretching across the ground gave me a rough fix on their position.
"……."
Thwack!
I swung the blade the instant the black silhouette finally appeared—
『Agh…….』
The male student crumpled, clutching at his eye.
『Ha, haha…….』
I had deliberately struck as low as I could. Low enough that, in any normal situation, it would have caught him in the stomach or the legs.
『You knew…… I'd be doubled over, didn't you.』
"Yeah."
I wrenched his arm behind his back, pinned him down, and drove my knee hard into his spine to hold him there.
"Honestly, I figured you'd see through it anyway. That I was hiding here, waiting for you."
I knew I couldn't run fast—and so did they. If wounded prey suddenly vanished from sight, it meant it was hiding somewhere close. There was no way a pack of lunatic hunters like these would fail to use that fact against me.
『I underestimated you……. I'll admit it.』
A sigh-laden sentence drifted out.
『We lost.』
At the same moment, the sirens bored into my ears—the firefighters had apparently pulled right up to the school gates.
Finally.
We could leave this school.
『By the way, Teacher?』
"What."
『Why did you struggle this hard? That ankle of yours. You might spend the rest of your life limping, you know. You already wrecked it, and then you pushed it this far past its limit.』
"Because I want to live."
Even if it takes this— I want to walk out of here alive…….
The unfamiliar voice murmured it like a prayer, and somehow it rang hollow in my ears.
『Don't you think dying without pain beats living in pain?』
"You're asking the wrong question."
My arm locked around the thing even tighter.
"Death isn't on my list of options. It can't be. It's not allowed to be."
At that, a strangled sound of laughter came from beneath me.
『You can really say that. With that face on.』
『Could I ever become like you, Teacher? When I grow up…….』
I couldn't bring myself to answer. The truth is, I, too▓
"Ah……."
The moment I opened my eyes, an insistent pain flared up again from the ring finger of my left hand, wrapped tight in bandages.
"Mm……."
"Sir?"
Sensing Yu Hyeonjae's presence beside me, I flinched.
"You survived, I see."
"Were you hoping I wouldn't?"
Yu Hyeonjae joked, his brow creasing slightly. It wasn't annoyance on his face—it was something closer to pain.
"Were you injured?"
"No. No, sir. Well—injured, yes, but not anymore."
Yu Hyeonjae turned his hands over and over, then abruptly clenched them into fists and dropped them out of sight. I pretended not to notice the way his fingertips had been trembling.
"So—or rather, that extraordinary young lady seems to enjoy tormenting people, it appears."
Apparently I hadn't died on the spot but had been tortured instead. That child was truly unhinged.
"By the way, are the others still working on their articles?"
"I'll check. Uh……"
Maybe because their incidents were smaller in scale, the others seemed to have finished publishing ahead of us.
"It seems they went down ahead of us, as agreed. Publishing successfully must be the escape condition. Thank goodness."
"And since the mannequins are still clinging to us even after publication, I'd say not waiting around was the right call."
The pale mannequins were still behind us, mirroring our every movement. Perhaps because we'd managed to publish, they hadn't yet caught up to our pace—but they hadn't vanished either, so there was no room to relax.
"Right. Then let's head down as well."
Clunk.
The moment we took a single step into the emergency stairwell, the mannequins that had trailed us right to the exit snapped back to attention—and simply stood there, staring after us, as if watching us go.
Until we were gone from their sight entirely.
16. Publish the article and leave. The mannequins will no longer follow you.
Clunk.
Inside the stairwell, the first thing I saw upon opening the emergency door marked 14th Floor was—
"5th……, huh?"
a sign reading 5th Floor.
And beneath it, crouched low, looking up at us with puffy, swollen eyes—Jeong Jiho.
We both bent down at once, examining the boy's condition.
"Jiho, are you hurt anywhere? And Ms. Hwang Juyeon and Mr. Choi Jaeha, are they……"
Yu Hyeonjae never finished the sentence.
Whap!
Because the child, tears still clinging to the corners of his eyes, swung that fern-bristle fist of his straight into Yu Hyeonjae's face.
"……."
Slapping the cheek of the most influential corporate executive in the country.
A seven-year-old boy had just done exactly that.