The 26th Graduation Ceremony
"Wh—what the fuck! What IS that, fuck!"
"Kyaaaaaagh!"
"Go! Move, back door, NOW!"
"Wh-what the...?"
"Get the hell up and RUN, dammit!"
Shouts and screams tore through the air without order — the drumbeat of feet sprinting across marble, the sharp crack of shattering glass, the moans of someone who'd slipped in a puddle of blood and gone down hard, the sobbing of a student staring at what remained of a classmate's half-finished face, the wet retching of one trampled and knocked flat, spilling their guts onto the floor.
"Hhnng, the door—it won't, *hic*, open! What do we do...?"
"Everyone, move! We'll break it down!"
Students and teachers were packed in front of the school's main entrance like a flea market at dawn.
Thud!Crash!
"No—why won't this—"
He hurled a fire extinguisher with all his strength, but it bounced right off — as if the glass door were a slab of solid steel.
"Aaaagh, shit, RUN! That thing's coming down!"
Screech. SLAM.
The entire student body and faculty, terror-stricken, began diving into whatever rooms they could find.
"Hey, open the door! Let me in, dammit!"
And of course, there's always someone left behind in the scramble.
"Open the door, you fuck! You won't open it? You absolute — you motherless bastards, I've seen every one of your faces. Yeah, that's right — go on, survive real good! I'll round every last one of you up and hand-deliver you straight to that mask fucker."
This boy, whose bleached roots were screaming for a touch-up, had hidden himself in the central stairwell between the first floor and the basement.
The unidentified mask descended to the first floor, glanced around, then — instead of following the boy down into the basement — walked off along the first-floor corridor.
Seizing the moment, the boy scrambled up to the second floor.
Clunk.
He tried the first door he saw — the teachers' office — but it was locked.
"You little sh—!"
He forced his voice down. Making more noise, apparently, was not an option.
He'd just turned to look elsewhere when—
"Wh-who is it...?"
From inside the office came the timid voice of a girl.
"Who's *what*, damn it. Open the— ...please."
The boy caught himself and softened his tone, a beat too late.
Something shuffled around inside, and before long the lock clicked and the door to the teachers' office swung open.
"Y-you're... a person, right?"
"The hell? Are your eyes just decoration?"
"N-no, sorry... I'm sorry..."
The bob-haired girl peered up at him anxiously.
"At first I thought you were the mask, so I couldn't open it right away... I'm sorry..."
"Ugh, fuck. Whatever."
The boy scanned the teachers' office.
He wasn't the only one in there.
A teacher who seemed unable to walk, a boy impossible to tell whether dead or unconscious, a long-haired girl curled up weeping in the corner.
With him, they made five.
The introductions passed by in a blur. The boy whose language desperately needed reforming was a third-year. The bob-haired girl who'd first opened the door was a first-year. The teacher with the sprained ankle and a makeshift splint taught Korean. The bespectacled boy who'd been unconscious and just came around was a second-year. The gaunt girl with the long straight hair was a third-year.
"Three of those mask fuckers?"
"Yes. The one I saw had only a left eye-hole — and the one our second-year senior saw had only the right one."
The mask the third-year boy had seen had nothing but the corners of a mouth, faintly curved into a smile.
"So each mask has its assigned grade?"
"That seems to be it."
For a long while they talked, swinging between panic and something like calm. What about the teachers — why was this happening — was this place really labyrinthified — even Red Weavers avoid invasive labyrinths, so how were they supposed to get out — how long did they have to stay — why, of all godforsaken places, did it have to be HERE!
"But it's been a while now, and nothing's happened, right? Maybe they're gone?"
"Maybe someone should go check."
"Check, my ass. What if it's standing right there the second you open the door?"
The third-year shot back at the second-year's suggestion. The bespectacled boy shrank for a moment, but he didn't back down.
"But we have to go out eventually. We don't know how long we'll be trapped in here — we need to get food and water from the cafeteria."
"...Kid's got a brain on him. Problem is this, though: who goes first. You know what you're signing up for by saying that, right?"
The boy with the glasses looked at the third-year's sharp-edged scowl, sighed briefly, and answered.
"Yes. I'm prepared to go—"
"—No, kids. I'll go."
The Korean teacher, who had fished painkillers out of a colleague's drawer, stepped forward on her limping leg.
"They attack *you* before they attack me — that's what you're saying, right? That's probably why they don't come into the office either. Even when they were smashing through classroom doors after you."
"That's... true, but..."
"Then it's right that it's me."
And so, with her makeshift preparations complete, the Korean teacher opened the front door of the office.
Screech.
"Gasp."
"Fuck."
A white mask with a single eye-hole — gouged black on the left — was standing directly in front of the door.
The bob-haired girl squeezed her eyes shut.
"Hey. Open them."
The third-year boy tapped her shoulder.
By some mercy, the Korean teacher had not been torn to shreds. She simply stood there, fingertips trembling, facing the mask.
"Looks like they really don't touch teachers. They don't force their way in, either."
"Ha, haha..."
Eyes rimmed red, the teacher made a sound that could have been relief or laughter.
"Th-then, I'm heading out? Stay quiet, all of you. Don't fight."
Click. Tap.
Careful to keep her distance from the mask, she limped out of the office —
"Three hours. We have to assume she's dead."
— and never came back.
"Even with a hurt leg, three hours for a trip to the cafeteria doesn't make any sense."
"Then the teacher has... p-passed away..."
"That's how we have to think. And move."
I, too, knew in my gut that the Korean teacher would never reappear in this film. Not alive, at the very least.
A labyrinth shows no mercy. If a hostile entity has been assigned to the students, then one assigned to the faculty must be assumed to exist as well — that is the correct judgment to make.
A labyrinth is fair. If nothing else, it is impartial. If one rule does not apply to a given person, then a different rule applies to them instead.
But failing to realize that was no fault of theirs.
A labyrinth — and an invasive labyrinth above all — is an unknown expanse of space and time. And no one on earth could be expected to make sound judgments while the people beside them died, horribly, one after another.
"Then let's head for the broadcast room like we agreed, senior."
"Y-yeah."
"Don't be too scared. If anything happens, you can just use me as bait and run. What matters is that *you* make it to the broadcast room."
The bespectacled second-year and the long-haired third-year girl moved to the broadcast room on the same floor. Nothing went wrong. While the boy kept watch beside the door, the girl operated the broadcasting equipment — a broadcast club veteran, apparently, handling it with practiced hands despite her shaking.
Beeeep—.
Sound began to pour from the speakers.
"What you're hearing is a recording I have left playing in front of the broadcast room microphone. The moment this broadcast begins, I will return immediately to the second-floor teachers' office..."
True to their plan, the moment the first sentence aired safely, the two bolted out of the room and sprinted back to the office.
"...The third-years are assigned the mouth-shaped mask. We have now confirmed three masks in total, each one in charge of a single grade. These masks do not attack teachers first, and they do not enter the teachers' office..."
Partway through, there was an announcement explaining the Korean teacher's disappearance, and a plea for anyone who knew her whereabouts.
"...We intend to work together to bring back food from the cafeteria. To anyone still alive: please gather at the teachers' office..."
I know how this film ends.
Those children — every last person in that school — die.
And knowing that, watching the last living record of them, so vivid and so alive...
"Uuuwwgh..."
No way they're going to kill someone for dirtying a seat, right?
Then they should've let people go to the bathroom halfway through in the first place.
I turned my eyes away from the damp, heavy presence in the seat beside me.
"Guys — after one day, the school store's fully restocked again! No more worrying about food!"
"Teacher, if you see anyone wearing a skirt, you run or you hide immediately. Remember? None of us wear skirts anymore."
The close-knit survivors of Seonghwa High learned the labyrinth's rules with their own bodies, day by day.
"No! Let go of me!"
"W-we have to go, unni. If you don't go now, then you'll..."
And in the process, one person at a time, they grew fewer.
As the days passed, the light went out of the survivors' eyes.
"Fuck — if you've got the nerve to slam doors in people's faces and leave them behind, then at least have the nerve to survive properly. Utter dumbasses right to the bitter end."
The rooftop of Seonghwa High School became a crematorium. And a graveyard.
"K-kids. You know Seonghyeon, don't you? Kim Seonghyeon, class 2-3? He's my son — Seonghyeon. Wh-where's Seonghyeon?"
"Yerim-ah! Where's our Yerim? Lee Yerim, class 3-1! It's Daddy! Where's my daughter!"
Ah. Now that I think of it, this was around a month after Seonghwa High School had been labyrinthified — right around the time public attention to the tragedy was starting to fade. It was a small, rural general high school with fewer than 200 students in it, after all; the country was slowly losing interest in what had happened there.
Then several parents snuck into the labyrinth while the perimeter control was loosening, and all hell broke loose. I remember that.
"How did you all get in here? What are they saying out there? Did just the mothers and fathers come in? What about everyone else? The Red Weavers? Something like a rescue team?"
"Can't you tell just by looking at me? None of that came. They've washed their hands of us. Well, when has anyone ever sent people into an invasive labyrinth?"
Unlike contact-type labyrinths, invasive labyrinths are sealed off with ironclad strictness by the government. Doesn't matter if you're a hardened Red Weaver who's cleared contact labyrinths a dozen times over — first, the door is shut.
Faced with a phenomenon no one knows how to counter, in a space where entry means a 99 percent chance of death, how catastrophic would the backlash be if they let ordinary citizens wander in at will?
To enter an invasive labyrinth through official channels, you must first undergo repeated psychological evaluations and counseling, then prepare and submit a mountain of convoluted documents covering your own injury and death — and then pass yet another review.
Usually, the labyrinth resolves itself before that grueling process is finished. By annihilation.
In other words — a place even elite trained agents avoid, a place even the Red Weavers who make their living clearing contact labyrinths turn away from. For a civilian to go in is, of course, out of the question.
"Ahhhugh, S-Seonghyeon... my poor, poor baby..."
But then, parents are parents. There's no helping that heart — the heart that drives a person to commit pure madness in the end.
"Seonghyeon's mother, where are— ...what is that! Ma'am! Get over here, right now!"
"Aigoo, my puppy... where were you... Mommy's here. Let's go home now. I'll make you your favorite japchae and galbijjim, okay? Come on, let's hurry..."
"Ma'am, NO! That is not Kim Seonghyeon! You have to snap out of it! H—god, this is insane. That thing doesn't even have a HEAD!"
"Kim Seonghyeon is dead, ma'am! That thing is the labyrinth playing tricks to get you KILLED!"
A new hostile entity — one assigned to the parents — had sprung into being, and a few more people disappeared because of it.
"I can hear rain."
But man is an animal of adaptation.
"Yeah. Let's hang an umbrella in each classroom later. Hey, what day of the week is it today, again?"
Monotonous days unspooled one after another — waking at a set time, following set routes to scavenge food and hunt for clues that might solve the labyrinth, then sleeping again at a set time.
"Wednesday."
"Then we can't run on the stairs during lunch period."
At some point, they stopped dying to unexpected attacks from the masks.
"Hi."
And yet, the name tags on the rooftop kept multiplying.
"What more are we supposed to do here to get out? What ELSE do we have to do? Maybe... maybe we really do all have to die before..."
"If you're gonna spout that kind of bullshit, go shut your mouth and stuff your face with bread instead. Your brain's gone to mush from carb deficiency."
"If my mouth's shut, how am I supposed to eat the bread..."
And so the days drifted by.
The screen settles on the desk calendar in the teachers' office.
A circle has been drawn around December 31st.
"They said we might be able to get out on the first day of break! That we'd ALL get out together! Aaaaaagh!"
Most of the children who still had days left broke apart that day.
"Please — please, don't do this. Let's just hold on a little longer. Okay? We have the closing ceremony too. Okay? Please..."
"And if we can't get out even then? Huh? Then what do we do? That scares me more. How much longer are we supposed to rot in this shithole?"
For children who wanted nothing more than to leave the school and couldn't, the endpoint was the rooftop.
Time flows again.
The third-year boy — his hair now jet black, the bleached roots a thing of the past — opened his own locker one day, and his whole body went rigid.
Congratulations on your graduation, Yoon Haejun!
Inside the locker were a graduation congratulation card bearing his name, a notice outlining the graduation ceremony schedule, a jet-black graduation gown and a square mortarboard — and a lavish bouquet of flowers.
That day was February 5th.
The day of Seonghwa High School's 26th graduation ceremony.