The Gate at the End of the Hallway

After confirming that the children had each filed into their own stall, I waited quietly outside.

Why didn't Kwon Haeseong follow us in?

But we weren't exactly short-handed ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠at the moment, and the kids would be out soon enough, so I held my tongue and waited.

Tap.

Before long, the children finished their business and marched out one by one to wash their hands. I saw no reason to stop them from doing it themselves, and simply trailed after them toward the row of sinks.

And there, at the sinks, was Kwon Haeseong.

Something was off, though.

"Teacher Haeseong? Is something the matter?"

Kwon Haeseong stood before the sinks, staring through the bathroom door as if it might crumble under his gaze.

"……"

Leaving him to his silence, I lifted Taejae up onto the sink and turned on the faucet.

"These sinks are a bit tall. They'd be hard for the kids to use on their own."

As I said it, I glanced back at Kwon Haeseong.

"……?"

There he was, glaring at the door out of nowhere with the eyes of a man staring down a mortal enemy.

What on earth are you doing?

I looked at the door myself. Nothing strange about it—except, unlike before, it was slightly ajar.

"Teacher Haeseong, please help the kids wash their hands."

I had no idea what had spooked him, but this was no time to wait for the man to reboot. One look at the three pairs of eyes lined up behind me, waiting their turn, would explain my impatience to anyone.

"Ah… yes."

Only then did Kwon Haeseong snap his head around and awkwardly scoop Noah up. Water began to run from the neighboring sink.

"Teacher! A little closer, please!"

"Is… is this about right?"

"Oh! Perfect! You're really good at this, Teacher!"

"……Thank you."

Watching the two of them hit it off with surprising ease, I lifted Cheonji, the next in line.

"The person who was in here earlier must have left. He seemed in a hurry to finish up and get out—maybe we made him uncomfortable?"

"……He'll come back."

There was an oddly certain edge to his voice.

"You think so?"

What exactly had gone on in here?

I found myself recalling the man I'd bumped into in the bathroom moments ago. He'd been caked head to toe in dirt, like he'd been rolling around in some community garden plot.

His hat had kept me from getting a good look at his face.

Looks like he had a rough day too, was about the impression he'd left on me.

Beyond that… nothing about him really stood out.

But Kwon Haeseong had been glaring at the door with narrowed, triangular eyes, so I'd worried that maybe some pointless confrontation had broken out while I wasn't looking. I hadn't heard any raised voices, though.

…And if anyone had picked a fight with a man that size, I would have quietly rooted for him on principle.

You'd have to earn your entry with sheer courage alone.

Still, what gnawed at me was that after observing this man for the past few days, I'd concluded he had a personality far less suited to his appearance.

—Um… is it okay if I do it like this…?

—That's mine… a-ah, no, it's fine…

—Noah. Hold still… no, not that I'm telling you not to move at all, just…

Hold on. This man wasn't picking fights—he was getting thoroughly robbed, wasn't he?

I looked at Kwon Haeseong, who stood there waiting as patiently as ever, and choked back a sigh.

"Shall we head out, then? If we run into that man again on the field trip, well, so be it. Unless… you were in the middle of an important conversation?"

Are you a dog? Who waits that long?

"……No. It's just… nothing, really."

Kwon Haeseong mumbled the words with a vague nod, and I herded him toward the door. Come on, let's go. He's clearly not coming back.

"We'll tour the rest of the research departments and head over to the field team offices around the scheduled time. Though… are we really allowed to go there?"

"…Mm, it should be fine. The field teams mostly do paperwork in the office anyway. Like any other office workers…"

Well, that was a relief.

Then why do I feel so uneasy?

The back of my neck had gone cold. The feeling just wouldn't sit right.

"Okay, then…"

—Creeeak.

—Thud.

"What the—"

An arm blocked our path, and we stopped dead where we stood. I held my breath, eyes flying wide open.

So—what was this, exactly?

I watched Taejae push the door open and step through, the three other children following right behind him.

No different from me or Kwon Haeseong. We'd been trailing close on their heels the whole time.

Yes, that's what we were doing.

But the moment the door closed and we stepped into the corridor, the surroundings were impossibly, absurdly dark—like walking into a darkroom.

The hair on my scalp stood on end. Instinctive dread at sudden darkness—maybe that much was only natural.

We waited in silence for a little while, but nothing changed.

I clenched and unclenched my fists, willing myself to stay calm.

Get a grip.

Couldn't forget what my job actually was.

And with that thought, the fear seemed to recede, just a little.

"……The door won't open."

I spun around immediately and pulled at the handle, but it didn't budge. Worse, the feel of it was all wrong for the bathroom door we'd just come through.

Chillingly cold, and far heavier.

"Let me try."

"Any luck?"

"……No. This isn't a door that's going to open anytime soon."

Nothing but the rattling clatter of the handle, not even a crack of light showing through.

I reached out at once, drawing the heads of the children who should have been around me toward my side, one by one.

One. Two… three.

"What could this possibly be? It's too dark to be a blackout."

"I don't think it's a blackout. There don't seem to be any windows, and…"

Kwon Haeseong's explanation trailed off into a mumble, but I caught his meaning in full.

As if to prove the point, goosebumps rippled up my spine in waves.

Come to think of it, there were long glass skylights at the end of every hallway.

The memory played back vividly in my mind: midday sunlight streaming through those skylights, flooding the corridor.

…Just as my brain was about to overheat from the contradiction, an even more unwelcome truth crashed down on me.

One's missing.

One of the children wasn't there.

No matter how many times I reached out, I couldn't find the fourth.

Blood ran cold through my entire body, but I forced the words out with all the calm I could scrape together.

"Teacher Haeseong—is one of the kids over by you? I have three here on my end."

"……No… I'll look."

Urgency bled through Kwon Haeseong's reply. I spoke to the children near me, keenly aware of the small movements I could feel at my side.

"That scared you, huh? It's okay. The teachers will figure this out. Noah, are you here?"

I felt out the slight differences in their heights as I called each name.

"Yes! I'm here!"

"Cheonji?"

"Yes…"

"Good. Seoro?"

"Yes, Teacher! It's so dark in here."

Whoa. Hold on a second.

My gut feeling had been right on the mark. I stood alone in the dark, appalled.

The one who wasn't here was really Taejae? Not Noah?

"Taejae?"

No answer. I shouted his name into the pitch-black dark, but nothing came back, no matter how long I waited.

"……It looks like Taejae's gone."

Saying it out loud made it so much grimmer.

"Maybe he got frightened and is hiding somewhere…"

Please. God, let it be that.

After that, Kwon Haeseong and I put our heads together until they nearly burst, and finally agreed to move out and search for Taejae. We couldn't leave the children alone here, so each of us gripped a small hand in ours and started walking forward.

"Taejae!!"

"Taejae! Can you answer us? Your teachers are right here!"

"Taejae!"

"Nam Taejae, come out right nooow!!"

"Taejae, I'll give you my 'Don't-Know Sweet Potato' plushie from home."

Even the kids joined in, calling his name, but there was no sign of a response anywhere.

After walking for what felt like ages, we finally found something.

…Just not the little scholar from Cheonghak-dong.

"That's…"

"……!"

In my entire life, I had never once seen anything like this.

A green aurora—the kind said to appear only in the polar regions—rippled in a perfect circle before us.

That's… impossible, right? How could an aurora born of Earth's magnetic field exist at the end of a blocked-off basement corridor?

I blinked rapidly, staring in silence at the aurora as it pulsed with an unpleasant, unsettling energy.

But unlike me, Kwon Haeseong seemed to ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠have grasped something, and let out a faint, strangled sound.

"Ah… I think I know what happened."

With a sigh, he delivered the news.

What news? Why did Taejae disappear, and why is there an aurora down here?

Kwon Haeseong looked hopeless, as if he had no idea how to explain this, but after much struggle he finally forced the words out.

The tip of his slender finger pointed at the shimmering aurora.

"That, first of all, is a Gate."

"……A Gate. Like the kind you enter dungeons through?"

"Yes. And… there's a very high chance that Taejae went inside that Gate…"

Excuse me. One moment, please.

What did you just say, sir?

Maybe he'd read the murderous aura rolling off me, because Kwon Haeseong—for once—sped up his delivery.

"First of all, this place is where the company separately manages the dungeons it's classified under safety-management grade… And if my guess is right, the man we saw in the bathroom pulled us down here…"

Kwon Haeseong kept explaining, all the while glancing nervously at my face.

So, to sum up what he was telling me, our situation was as follows:

This place, where we now stood, was apparently where the company managed only the dungeons it had acquired through auction.

They'd supposedly been put through numerous rounds of testing, so safety was guaranteed.

The problem was… nobody could tell me what that standard actually was.

Guaranteed for whom? That was the question.

From the way he talked, it sounded like the field teams and security teams were the ones who regularly entered these dungeons—and if so, wasn't the bar for "safe" set a little too high?

And another thing—

"That man had no reason to drag us down here, though?"

What possible motive could he have for bringing two innocent teachers and four perfectly harmless children to a dungeon basement?

Kwon Haeseong was clearly wrestling with the same question, his face full of uncertainty.

"This is speculation, but I believe he's probably a spatial-transference awakener somewhere in the D-to-F range…"

He rattled off the characteristics of spatial transference as he understood them,

then concluded that an "error" or an "unexpected variable" occurring with the man's ability could have produced exactly the situation we were in now.

…I found myself nodding along to the surprisingly plausible logic.

There was nothing else that could explain it, after all.

But if his theory was right, then this whole mess happened because that man hadn't closed a Gate properly—which meant that, thanks to him, we were now standing in a BOND basement dungeon that we would never have visited in a hundred years.

…Haha.

We were screwed.

I turned my head back toward the Gate in question. To be precise, toward the single white sneaker lying on the floor in front of it.

When he'd blurted it out with no preamble—cut explanation short and just announced a kid had gone in there—I'd nearly fallen over backward. Now I felt dizzy for an entirely different reason.

"……Would it be better to wait for a rescue team?"

"No. I don't think waiting is realistic. The security team does patrol on a regular schedule, but they don't open the door and check every single time. Besides…"

"……"

"For security reasons, that door is almost certainly designed to open only from the outside. Which means… we have two options."

Two whole options in this worst-case scenario. Was that supposed to count as a blessing?

Two fingers thrust themselves into my field of vision, holding up the number two.

"One: we force-clear the dungeon, which will trigger an alert to the security team. …Honestly, this is close to impossible."

I could say with certainty that my face was drained beyond pale and well into corpse territory.

"Two: we tear the door… off its hinges."

That was the more realistic plan, at least compared to clearing a dungeon.

Door removal.

"Can you actually tear that door down?"

"Yes, it's possible… it'll take some time, though."

…Okay. So he was confident.

If it had been just me and Kwon Haeseong, we'd have charged into that dungeon after Taejae without a second's hesitation.

But right now, besides Taejae, we had three more preschoolers in our care.

Better to go in alone than drag the kids in there.

Which meant, in practice, there was really only one option.

"I'm going into the dungeon to find Taejae. Teacher Haeseong, you take the children and get out of here, then call in a rescue request."

Since I couldn't tear a steel door off its frame, this was, in a way, the best available plan.

But Kwon Haeseong clearly didn't see it that way, and pushed back.

"No. I'll ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠tear the door down, so please, Teacher Hwiyeon, take the children out and call for help. I'm… better suited to finding Taejae."

Yes, fine, looking at those forearms and shoulders of his, I understood the logic.

"We don't have time to stand around debating. Honestly, I'm already terrified. What if something's in there—and you left Taejae alone with it?"

"…Still, better me than you, Teacher…"

We'd had this conversation a good distance away from the children,

precisely to prevent them from falling apart at any hint of Taejae's disappearance.

But there was something two worn-out adults, Kwon Haeseong and I, had overlooked:

Seven-year-olds in the middle of a growth spurt have eyes and ears sharper than you'd ever expect.

"Nam Taejae!! No!!"

Noah snatched up Taejae's white sneaker lying in front of the Gate.

"……!"

"……Is Nam Taejae dead?"

No, that's not it—kids, listen—

"Teacher, did Taejae go in there?"

That part's true, but Cheonji, sweetie…

"……"

In that instant, my eyes met Kwon Haeseong's.

Ah. This one's already lost it mentally.

Noah drowning in grief and despair, Seoro having already pronounced his best friend dead, and Cheonji calmly, mercilessly asking for the facts.

I ignored the skull-splitting throb behind my temples and forced my mouth open.

"Taejae is going to be fine. I'm going in to find him, and you three just need to wait a little while and go out with Teacher Haeseong, okay?"

Cheonji and Seoro seemed to understand… but the problem was, Noah looked completely hollowed out.

"Noah, I…"

I had to talk him down somehow.

But the moment I stepped closer and reached for Noah's shoulder—

"Wait for me, Nam Taejae!! I'll save you!"

"W-wait a second—!"

Noah flung himself into the Gate, stopping barely a handspan short of it.

His arms flailed wildly through empty air before flopping down onto the ground.

And before he could even come back to his senses—

"Hey, Kim Noah! Go slow!"

"Huh? Seoro's going too? Then I have to go too!"

Before anyone could stop them, Cheonji and Seoro slipped inside the Gate as well…?

Are you kidding me—

"Noah! Cheonji! Seoro! You little—!"

My desperate scream never reached them.

Like a madman, I hurled my body toward the Gate that had, in ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the blink of an eye, swallowed three preschoolers—no, four.

"NO!!"